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QUIET TALKS ABOUT 
THE HEALING CHRIST 


S. D. GORDON’S 
QUIET TALKS 


Quiet Talks on Power 
Quiet Talks on Prayer 
Quiet Talks on Service 


Quiet Talks About Jesus 
Quiet Talks on Personal Problems 
Quiet Talks with World Winners 


Quiet ‘Talks About the Tempter 
Quiet Talks on Home Ideals 
Quiet Talks About Our Lord’s Return 


Quiet Talks on Following the Christ 

Quiet Talks About the Crowned Christ 
of the Revelation 

Quiet Talks on John’s Gospel 


Quiet Talks on the Deeper Meaning of 
the War 
Quiet Talks About Life After Death 


Quiet Talks About Simple Essentials 
Quiet Talks About The Healing Christ 





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QUIET TALKS 


ABOUT 


The Healing Christ | 


By 
S. D. GORDON 


Author of ‘Quiet Talks on Power,” 
‘Quiet Talks on Prayer’ etc. 


Chicago 
Fleming H. Revell Company 
London and Edinburgh 





Copyright, 1924, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


Frinted in the United States of America 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


Some Principles of Healing 


As TAUGHT IN GopD’s WorD, DIRECTLY 
AND INDIRECTLY 


It is God’s first will that men be pure in 
heart, clear in mind, strong in purpose, gen- 
tle and content in spirit, poised in judgment, 
happy in circumstances, and strong and well 
in body. 
God does not send disease. It comes through 
some disobedience of the natural laws of 
the body, conscious or unconscious, though 
rarely traceable in full. It may come from 
the Devil, or, because of the break of sin 
affecting all life. But always through that 
open door of disobedience to the laws of the 
body. 
Christ heals men’s bodies to-day by His own 
direct supernatural touch, sometimes through 
the physician and the use of means, some- 
times without means, sometimes when means 
are confessedly powerless, and sometimes 
overcoming the unwise use of means. The 
Holy Spirit’s leading is the touchstone. 
In healing Christ is always reaching in for 
the far greater thing, the healing of the 
spirit, the life. 
There is sometimes a waiting time, after the 
conditions are met, before the full healing 
5 


6 


Some Principles of Healing 


comes. There is a disciplinary side in bodily 
suffering, but the healing comes as quickly 
as the lesson is learned. 

The Devil heals men’s bodies, within sharply 
defined limits, under disguise, that he may 
get and tighten his hold on man. He bit- 
terly opposes healing through Christ’s su- 
pernatural touch. This is particularly true 
regarding those that have the gift of leader- 
ship. 

The conditions for Christ’s healing are the 
same as for being saved. Trust Him fully as 
your Saviour and Master. Then go to Him 
for whatever you need, always seeking the 
Holy Spirit’s guidance. 


II. 


III. 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE A if he : 


THE CHRIST HEALING 
Doing impossible things — Why the 
crowds came — Twenty-four healing 
miracles—Mostly incurable—List of dis- 
eases treated—Extent of power—Effect 
on crowds—W hy Christ healed—«T 
forgot.” 


Is Iv Curist’s WILL To HEAL Our 

Bopigs To-Day? ; 
The need—Medical science—Physi- 
cians and drugs—Eden—Job at the 
front door—Healing-teaching trail—Acts 
the Church Book—Eight instances— 
Ephesus center—Corinth center—Some 
not healed—The Epistles—Twofold 
aim—Immunity from death—** Paraly- 
sis, heart disease.” 


Dors Gop SEND SICKNESS AND 

DISEASE ? 
A religion of power—Christ” s incidental 
by-products — Christianity’s distinctive 
trait—Foreign mission objective—Com- 
mon impression about origin of disease 
—The teaching of the Book—The Job 
story—Healing threefold—John Rus- 
kin’s copper kettlh—An English woman 
in Algiers. 


7 


8 
15 


24 


43 


8 


IV. 


VI. 


Contents 


How Dogs Curist HEAL? THE 
ConpDITIOoONS: THE MeErtTHOD: THE 
Usz oF MEANS 


Natural and Supernatural—Twofold 
objective in healing—The «« How ” of 
conditions—Act, purpose, habit, atti- 
tude—The ‘*‘ How” of method—A 
Christian physician—Seven ways heal- 
ing comes—Four natural, two supernat- 
ural—Use of Means—Pope Leo— 
Homely touches—A poultice of figs— 
«© Faith Street”’—'Two cancer cases— 
Fever. 


How Far May Curist’s HEALING 
Be Expecrep? Curist’s GIVING 
AND MAn’s TAKING 


Wide range of disease—Healed but limp: 
ing—Eye-glasses—T eeth— Dentistry — 
Extent of Christ’s healing—And in 
the Acts—The answer twofold—Ask 
Christ—* Take ”—Taking three-sided 
—How to take—Rheumatoid arthritis 
—A club-foot. 


THE HuMAN SIDE OF HEALING AND 
HEALTH 


The break in the rhythm—The remark- 
able Hebrew health trail—Adam-in- 
Eden model—True Christian life—Ef- 
fect of mental attitude on body—Slavish 
fear—Ninety per cent. of diseases above 
the ears——The condemned murderer— 
Poisoned milk—Graying hair stopped— 
A surprising prescription—Obedience to 
laws of body—Seven items—Nine com- 
mon sins. 


63 


95 


113 


VII. 


VIII. 


Contents 


Gonp’s SCHOOL OF SUFFERING: CAN 
WE HaAstTEN GRADUATION Day? 


Experience as teacher—Fees—Saintly 
stubbornness—Weak strong points— 
The Schoolmaster—The Job story—Six 
chapters — The twofold purpose — 
Paul’s thorn—The threefold answer— 
The continuous healing touch on Paul 
—Jacob’s limp—A_ threefold crisis— 
Graduation Day—** Under the bed.” 


Tue Devit’s HEALING: IMITATIONS 
AND COUNTERFEITS 


The Devil’s trail—Two sources of su- 
pernatural power—The Devil’s miracles 
—Egypt—Sharp limitations—The com- 
ing crisis—The Devil’s healings to-day 
—A double healing in Berlin—Spirit dis- 
cernment—How gotten. 


9 


152 


193 


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Preface 


CHRIST will meet every need of a man’s life. 
And He will meet it eagerly and to the full. 

If we don’t have all we need the trouble isn’t 
with the Hand that gives but the hand that 
takes. 

No man’s band has ever yet reached up to 
take as much as the Pierced Hand is reaching 
down to give. 

But giving is a fine art, so as not to hurt in 
trying to help. And the taking needs skill, too, 
though the simplest may take all he needs. Skill 
in taking is chiefly skill of the heart. 

Teaching is rare. Matured rounded-out teach- 
ing is yet more rare. And the chief need to-day, 
in the bustle and dust of much stirring about, is 
teaching, simple, clear, full, poised teaching. 

Healing is one of the tangled subjects. Two 
others keep it close company, so far as being 
tangled is concerned, namely, holiness, and the 
return of Christ. 

It is easy to get warped unmatured partial 
statements, quite honestly made, on these sub- 
jects. 


The direct preparation of this little book has 
taken eleven years, the indirect runs further 
back. I didn’t set out to write a book. 

I felt the need of getting my own feet on a 

11 


12 Preface 


difficult bit of pavement. I read and watched 
and prayed to understand for myself. 

And now the substance of it is given to others, 
with a prayer that it may, possibly, help them 
a little as it has helped me. 

Two books have been constantly studied, the 
Book of God, and the Book of Life. These two 
go together. 

The Book of God is written out of life, under 
the Holy Spirit’s touch and control. The Book 
of Life is still being written. 

It takes a simple skill of habitual reading to 
understand the first. It takes a careful trained 
reading habit to read understandingly the sec- 
ond. 

The Book of God is the teaching book, written 
out of human experience, and full of illustra- 
tions out of life. 

The Book of Life is the illustration book. 
There are countless illustrations on every hand 
of all the teachings of the other book. 

One wants to read both. They fit together. 
And the conditions for understanding both are 
the same, a bent will, an open mind, a prayerful 
spirit, a keenly observing eye, and the constant 
practised reading. 

So there comes the discernment of our F'a- 
ther’s purposes and plans, and of how things 
are working out in actual life. 


The instances of healing given here are all 
known to me personally, with four exceptions. 
In each case I took pains to get the exact facts 


Preface 13 


of what actually took place. Else, of course, I 
would not tell these incidents in this open posi- 
tive way. The facts are clear. These are a 
few out of the many. | 

The four exceptions are, the two from my 
personal friend, Mr. James Moore Hickson of 
London, the one from my German deaconess 
friend of Berlin, and the one from a Texas 
friend. These four instances are known person- 
ally to these friends, who told me. 

And I have full confidence, not merely in their 
sincerity, but what is more important here be- 
cause not so common, in their trained accuracy 
in observation of actual facts, and in their care- 
ful detailed description of what they saw and 
know. 

And so, after these years of study, the little 
messenger is sent out in Christ’s name. And 
the one conscious purpose is that it may help 
some to reach up and take all the Pierced Hand 
is now reaching down to give. 


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THE CHRIST HEALING 


It is God’s first will for every man, every- 
where, that he shall be pure in heart, straight 
in life, strong in purpose, clear and open in 
mind, well-balanced in judgment, gentle in con- 
tact with others, at peace within, happy in 
circumstances, and strong and well in his body. 


Humanly Impossible. 


Curist did impossible things, when He was 
down here. That is, they were impossible to 
others. He did them. 

They were things that needed to be done. Men 
were helped by them. The tug of living was 
eased, and more. It took power to do them. 

It took a power more than the natural power 
men were familiar with. Others didn’t do them. 
They couldn’t. They didn’t have the power. 
Christ had the power needed. He did them. 
He did impossible things. 

Christ taught. He is commonly accepted as 
the race’s greatest teacher. Then there was 
more. He lived what He taught. He lived it 
first before He taught it. 

He lived it far more than even He could teach 
it. There was always a reserve of teaching 
actually lived back of the teaching taught. But 
there was more than teaching. Christ did things. 

He had ideals. His ideals have clean out- 
idealed the ideals of 2 pk But there was 


16 About the Healing Christ 


more than ideals. He brought things to pass in 
actual life. Men saw and felt and experienced 
things through His touch, things they needed 
and needed sorely, but didn’t have till He did 
them. 

The distinetive thing about Christ, of course, 
is that He died. He died as none other did, nor 
could, nor ean. The most outstanding thing 
about His life is the end of it. The knot on the 
end of the thread of His life, that gathered it all 
up in one, is His death. 

But apart from that, the outstanding thing is . 
that Christ did impossible things. Men admire 
and worship the man who can do outstanding 
things, actually bring them to pass. Christ did 
outstanding things. | 

He fed the hungry thousands with a few 
scanty loaves. How they’d like to have Him in 
some parts of Europe just now, if His activities 
could be restricted within desired limits. \ 

He stilled that sudden Galilean storm that 
blanched the bronzed cheeks of those hardened 
sailors, stilled it with a word; and stilled it into 
a great calm. 

He helped Peter pay his taxes, in a very 
unusual way. That has a very practical sound 
to-day. He robbed the ever-yawning grave of its 
hopeless victims. 

Of all things Christ did one stands out biggest. 
He healed men’s bodies of sickness and disease. 
The world was sick when Christ was here. 
There was no science of bodily healing. 

There was a natural healing. The Jews have 


The Christ Healing 17 


been famous through the centuries for their rare 
skill in healing through simple remedies. But, 
characteristically, dominantly, the race was sick. 
Christ healed men’s bodies. 

This was the thing that first drew the crowds 
in notable numbers. That fact itself tells how 
acute things were in this regard. The need was 
so sore, and so general, that once the word went 
out, it spread like a blessed wild-fire. 

And the crowds came from everywhere, and 
they came a-crowding so thick as to affect seri- 
ously His movements. 


Hopeless Incurables. 


There are thirty-three instances given of mir- 
acles done by Christ. And twenty-eight of them 
have to do with the body. ‘Twenty-four of them 
were miracles of healing (including now the 
three cases of death). Four others have to do 
with supplying bodily needs. 

There are sixteen summaries given of His vari- 
ous activities, including bodily healing. If one 
run over these summaries the first-flush, rough 
impression comes that the total of those healed 
probably ran into some several thousands. Peo- 
ple came in throngs. They came from all the 
surrounding countries, as far away as Tyre and 
the Upper Mediterranean. 

There are twenty-four individual instances of 
healing, given in the four Gospels. These become 
of intense interest for what they tell of Christ’s 
healing ministry. Of the twenty-four two would 
be classed as acute cases. 


18 About the Healing Christ 


The other twenty-two are all chronic cases, in- 
curables, extreme hopeless incorrigibles. Six 
(possibly eight) were demon-possessed, reckoned 
quite incurable. Three were actually dead. The 
thirteen others were distinctly hopeless ineur- 
ables. 

The healing power went to the last degree of 
human need. The humanly impossible yielded to 
Christ’s touch every time. There were no ex- 
ceptions so far as the soreness of the need was 
concerned. 

The story told is quite explicit on this point. 
Here is the list of diseases specifically named,— 
epilepsy, dropsy, deaf and dumb, palsy or 
paralysis, chronic hemorrhage, demon-possession, 
leprosy, withered hand (2. e., paralysis), blind, 
infirmities (possibly paralysis), restoration of 
ear cut off, and even the dead, three times named 
in three distinct stages. 

There is one outstanding passage that touches 
the extreme of need which Christ’s healing cov- 
ered. Matthew says ‘‘There came unto Him 
great multitudes, having with them the lame, 
blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and east 
them down at His feet; and He healed them.’’’ 
It is a significant passage. 

It was clearly an unusual crowd of helpless 
incurables, brought by their kinsfolk and friends 
and neighbours. What a sight! 

That word ‘‘maimed’’ catches one’s eye. It 
occurs twice. The word underneath has two 
meanings, crooked is one, and mutilated the 


* Matthew 15: 30. 


The Christ Healing 19 


‘other. Its use in Mark 9:43 clearly means a 
limb quite gone. 

The word under ‘‘lame’’ here is also used 
in the Mark passage for a limb cut off. The 
meaning intended here is quite clear. The heal- 
ing went to the extent of restoring a lost portion 
of the body, a limb or an arm or some other 
part. 

The extent of healing as regards the need is 
made quite clear, and is aS sweeping as clear. 
There were no exceptions so far as need went. 


A Bubbling-over Power at Work. 


The extent of Christ’s power to heal is put 
in as sweeping language. His power always 
covered fully the man’s need, whatever that 
chanced to be. There was simply no limit. His 
healing met every need, and met it fully. It 
could not have been greater. Three words can 
be used, Christ healed instantly, perfectly, and 
permanently. 

There is one exception frankly spoken of. 
Once, the healing went through two stages. 
First the man saw men ‘‘as trees walking,’’ then 
‘fall things clearly.’’ The interval of time in- 
volved was plainly so brief that, I think likely, 
the man himself would have gladly used the 
word ‘‘instantly.’’ 

Again that outstanding passage comes in. Its 
language could not be more graphic and ade- 
quate, and yet simple and brief. Matthew says 
‘““The multitudes wondered when they saw the 


20 About the Healing Christ 


dumb speaking, the maimed whole, and the lame 
walking, and the blind seeing.’’* 

The extent of the power at work is as striking 
as the sweep of disease covered. There’s a bub- 
bling-over exuberance, an overflowing abun- 
danee. The crowds came to know that if they 
would ‘‘only touch the border of His garment”’ 
they would know the healing power in their 
body. 

It says ‘‘power came forth from Him,”’ as 
though it breathed out of His very presence. 
The ease of action, the abundance of power, and 
the frequency and extent of Christ’s healing 
power stand in striking contrast to the Old 
Testament miracles. 

And the effect on the crowds itself revealed 
the touch of God. ‘‘They glorified’’ God. There 
was an exuberant singing of praise to such a 
God. Even the curious crowds that came seek- 
ing sensation found a sort that sent them away 
with a hush in their hearts, and praises to God 
on their lips. 

And, it is striking to note, that Christ gave 
this power to His disciples, unschooled and un- 
disciplined as they were, yet devoted to Him. 

Repeatedly they were sent out into the vil- 
lages and country districts. And they returned 
with ringing voices and shining faces, telling of 
the power that had attended their activity. And 
usually special emphasis is laid on healing, and 
on the casting out of evil spirits. 


* Matthew 15: 31. 


The Christ Healing 21 
Why Did Christ Heal? 


It becomes of intense interest to note why 
Christ healed, so far as the Gospel record goes. 
It is never intimated that He did it to let people 
know that He could. He never used power sim- 
ply to let men see He had it. 

It is never suggested that He did mighty works 
to prove His distinctive personality, who He 
was. This simply is not referred to. Inci- 
dentally it is made clear that He did have the 
exceptional power, and that He was the Son of 
God in the distinctive sense that was true of no 
other. 

Even when John, in the dark of the prison 
eell, puzzled to know why Christ didn’t fill out 
the official side of the Messiah’s task, as well as 
the personal side, even to him Christ simply 
points out what was being done as evidence that 
the old prophetic picture was being lived out. 

He comforts the lone prison vigil with word 
that John had been true. And that there was 
a waiting time ahead for both of them. 

No, Christ healed men because He couldn’t 
help it. Their sore need, so sore, tugged des- 
perately at His heart. He healed men because 
they needed healing. This stands out first and 
foremost. There is more, a big more, but in the 
Gospel narratives it is always incidental. 

It is true, broadly, as a principle, that mir- 
acles, the supernatural, came into action, 
throughout Scripture, to meet some emergency. 
But, when it comes to the immediate reason why 
Christ healed, as the narrative runs, it was to 


22 About the Healing Christ 


meet the personal need of suffering men and 
women. 

There is a strong, tender word constantly on 
His lips, and spoken of Himself, ‘‘compassion.’” 
It means to have the heart tenderly drawn out 
by need. It really means to suffer in heart be- 
cause of the suffering of others. 

This gives the ‘‘why’’ of Christ’s healing. 
One key-passage may be given as an index to the 
others, ‘‘He had compassion on them, and healed 
their sick.’’* 

He healed because He couldn’t help it. He 
could heal, and He couldn’t help healing, with 
such suffering before His eyes. His heart must 
answer to such needs. The healing is a window 
into Christ’s heart. And Christ Himself is the 
open window into the Father’s heart. 

One afternoon late a gentle-faced woman came 
at the close of the meeting and asked abruptly, 
‘‘Does God answer prayer?’’ She had a 
thoughtful face, and looked like one well cared 
for. 

I didn’t say ‘‘yes.’? A mere yes seemed too 
tame with that tense face, and those suffering 
eyes. I merely said ‘‘Sit down a moment.”’ 

And with a bit of prayer for guidance, I said, 
‘* Has He ever answered a prayer for you? just 
once?’’ For, you remember, one fact establishes 
a law of action. 

Instantly a startled look came into her eye. 
And in a low hushed voice she said, ‘‘Oh! I 


*Matthew 14:14. See also 15: 32, 20:34, 9:36 with 
10:1. Mark 1:41, 6:34, 8:2, Luke 7: 13-15. 


The Christ Healing 23 


forgot.’’ Then she told in a few words of when 
her daughter, years before, a child of ten or so 
then, had been critically ill. And the physician 
had said that the knife must be used. 

Her mother heart drew back from having a 
surgeon’s knife cut into that precious little body. 
Could she have a little time to think about that, 
she had asked. Yes, there was no immediate 
pressure, was the reply. 

That night she had retired for sleep. She 
spent much more time than usual on her knees. 
She didn’t ask for healing. She had not been 
taught that she might. 

She simply poured out her heart. God was a 
father. He was so good. It troubled her so 
sorely to have the knife used. Just a ery out of 
her heart, a yearning cry, inarticulate as to the 
how. 

Then she slept quietly. The morning came, 
and the physician. And after the examination 
a puzzled look came into his eyes. 

And he said quietly, ‘‘ I don’t just under- 
stand this; but a distinct change has come in 
your daughter’s condition. I won’t need to use 
the knife. She will get well without it.”? And 
she did. 

And the woman said with a changed voice, 
‘**T forgot.’’? Her own experience answeréd her 
tense question. 

Is it not a winsome bit out of life? Christ 
has not changed. His power is at our finger- 
tips now. No need need go unsupplied, if He 
may have His way. 


II 


IS IT CHRIST’S WILL TO HEAL OUR 
BODIES TO-DAY? 


It is God’s first will that men should be pure 
in heart, gripped by a nobly strong purpose, 
poised in our understanding of things, hu- 
manly gentle in our personal contacts, at sweet 
peace within, content in circumstances, and 
healthy and hearty in our bodies. 


The World is Sick. 


Is it Christ’s will to heal our bodies of sick- 
ness and disease and weakness to-day? He can, 
of course. He has the power. 

Is He willing to do it? Does He think it wise 
to? Is it part of His plan for us at the present 
time? 

There is need enough surely, so far as that 
goes. And surely that must go far with God. 
The race is sick to-day. 

Oh! there is more health than disease, more 
strength than weakness, more life than death. 
This is true. Yet the race is sick and diseased. 
That fact pushes its ugly self in at every turn. 

And there is a science of bodily healing to- 
day. It is quite modern. It was non-existent 
up until recent decades. It is a real science, 
properly so called. 

It is based on actual knowledge of the human 
body, and of substances found in nature, and of 
their action on the body. 

24 


Christ’s Will to Heal To-day 25 


It is based upon a vast accumulation of ex- 
perience, and of skill. It is accurately called a 
science, really a rare combination of science and 
of art, acquired skill in action. 

Of course, there are poor preachers, and poor 
lawyers, and poor physicians. The personal 
equation affects things enormously here, as 
everywhere. 

There is confessedly a vast amount of guess- 
work and of experimenting, at human expense 
of pain and suffering, and worse. Yet there is 
a real science of healing. 

There is a not-good professional pride here, as 
in all professional circles. And, say it very 
gently, that certainly doesn’t help any one. And 
there is an unhappy tendency, sharply marked 
and growing, toward a commercialism in all the 
noble professions. 

Yet the fact stands out blessedly that there 
is a science of bodily healing. And its gracious 
ministrations among men, through the years, 
in actual healing, and in relieving, is clear be- 
yond words to deseribe or imagination to pic- 
ture. 

It’s a striking fact that some of the most 
prominent leaders in this notable science have 
shown certain distinct tendencies, away from 
drugs and the knife, and toward advice about 
the intelligent care of the body. 

A long list might be given of quotations from 
the most eminent of physicians, in highest posi- 
tion, in England and America and the Continent, 
against the use of drugs, and concerning the 


26 © About the Healing Christ 


actual injuries inflicted by guesswork and ex- 
periment. These quotations magnify the place 
of nature in healing, through means, aside from 
remedies, and often overcoming the drugs given. 

There is an emphasis by these leaders on in- 
telligence in selection of foods, a wise obedience 
to bodily laws, and on the distinct bearing of the 
mental and spirit mood and attitude on bodily 
conditions. 

And, it should be noted with strong emphasis, 
that, quite apart from any direct action on God’s 
part, one’s mental attitude has incalculable in- 
fluence on the body. It affects the bodily con- 
ditions greatly at all times, and in disease and 
times of crisis it is pretty apt to be the decisive 
factor. 

Fear, the fear that’s afraid, opens the door to 
disease. It actually creates poisons in one’s 
body. <A simple heart-trust in God, and His 
goodness, with the confident atmosphere that be- 
longs with it, actually creates healthy conditions 
in the body. I am not speaking now of the 
numerous imaginary ills, but of actual physical 
conditions. 

Yet, notwithstanding the science of healing, 
the fact stands out at every corner, pathetically, 
tragically, that the world is sick, bodily ill. A 
recent article in a prominent daily, based on 
carefully compiled statistics, gathered through a 
period of years, estimated that between two and 
three millions are continually ill. If such figures 
eould be gathered, clearly enough those actually 
disturbed by bodily ills run into many, many 


Christ’s Will to Heal To-day 27 


millions. And this was only for the United 
States. 

Is it God’s will to heal our bodies to-day? 
There’s surely need enough. And He can do it. 
Will He? Does He want to? Is it in His heart 
and purpose to do it? 

May I put the result of many years of study, 
and of observation in many nations, and of ex- 
perience, into a single sentence? Then we can 
dig up and put together a few of the facts that 
are the underpinning of that sentence. 

And the simple sentence is this: 2 is God’s 
first will for every man that he shall be pure in 
heart, strong and noble in purpose, gentle im 
human contact, happy in circumstances, at peace 
in his nner spirit, and strong and well in body. 


A Blessed Healing Trail. 


Now, we are talking about God’s attitude in 
this matter. And so we naturally turn to God’s 
Book. It is striking to find out how the other 
book, the Book of Life, tallies up with, and il- 
lustrates, this written book, as of course it 
would. For the Book of God is a part of the 
Book of Life. It grew up out of human life. 
These are our two chief books of study here. 

It is striking to look, at once, at the original 
Eden picture of life. For that was God’s own, 
unhurt by any after touch. There man was in 
perfect health of body and spirit, living in happy 
unbroken contact with his God-chosen help- 
mate, in a garden. There was fulness of life, 


28 About the Healing Christ 


perfect health, and such a thing as weakness or 
disease or death quite unknown. 

The story of Job stands as a sentinel-teacher 
at the opening of this old Book of God. It 
stands at the outpost to guard and point the 
way. 

It is clearly the earliest of these books in its 
writing. It is devoted to the sorest question of 
human life, that is, human suffering, and God’s 
solution. We usually miss that ‘‘ and.’’ 

There are two parts to the story, Job’s suffer- 
ing, and the outcome. We have been fed- up on 
the first part, the suffering. The second part, 
the outcome, has been strangely ignored. Yet 
it is the bigger part, by all odds. 

There is suffering indeed, in family, in cir- 
cumstances, and then in body of a very grievous 
sort. Then the healing touch comes. And all 
is changed. Even the ash-heap becomes fragrant 
now, for it was the gateway to a new life of the 
spirit, and so to bodily health and vigour, and 
all else that came. 

Job’s story is put at the very gateway of 
God’s Book, with this stirring message: it is 
God’s will to heal the inner heart and life, and 
the body. 

Now note that this blessed trail of healing runs 
through the older pages of the Book unbroken. 
The teaching trail and the healing trail persist 
throughout side by side. 

It is a three-fold healing, protection from ae- 
tual disease just at hand, the continuance of 
health and vigour through the unseen touch of 


Christ’s Will to Heal To-day 29 


God, and the positive healing where disease had 
actually gotten in. 

From LEve’s recognition that it was through 
that touch on her body that weakness was over- 
come, and she was able to go through what has 
become the severest bodily test of life,” on 
through Abimelech’s experience, and Sarah’s," 
Rebekah’s* and Rachel’s,” and Moses’ leproused 
hand,’ and Miriam’s leproused body,’ the story 
runs. 

And the remarkable experience of the Hebrew 
‘people, in Egyptian slavery and as they were 
being freed, in closest touch with contagious 
epidemics, reveals the unseen touch of God 
plainly there, giving unusual bodily vigour under 
sore physical stress, and protecting from disease. 

There’s an outstanding bit at the beginning of 
the training of the new messenger nation. 
Israel was to become the world’s teacher-nation. 
And as they enter their long session of schooling 
special emphasis is laid on God’s eager willing- 
ness to heal. 

It comes first in the flush of the tremendous 
Red Sea deliverance, when they were peculiarly 
sensitive to impressions. In the tense plea that 
they keep in full touch with their Deliverer 
comes this: 


Genesis 4:1 with 3: 16. 

? Genesis 20: 17, 18. 

® Genesis 21:1, 2, with 11:30, and 17: 16, 17. 
*Genesis 25: 21. 

® Genesis 29: 31, 30: 22-24. 

Exodus 4: 6-7. 

*Numbers 12: 9-15. 


30 About the Healing Christ 


“*T will put none of the diseases upon thee 
which I have put upon the Egyptians; for I am 

the Lord that healeth thee.’’” 

There was the triple healing, protection from, 
the touch of continuous health, the actual heal- 
ing where disease had gotten in. 

Then under the hush and awe of the lone 
Mountain, all aflame with the presence of their 
wondrous God, in the midst of a yearning plea to 
them to keep in touch with Him, this word rings 
out: 

‘*T will take sickness away from the midst of 
thee. There shall none cast her young, nor be 
barren in thy land: the number of thy days I 
will fulfil.’’ ’ 

So the trail persists. Solomon remembers it 
in the great temple prayer.’ There’s Elijah and 
the widow’s only son,* and Elisha with another 
mother’s son,° and with Naaman,’ and Hezekiah’s 
never-to-be-forgotten story.’ 

There’s Asa’s failure to ask for needed heal- 
ing, with the implied criticism,” and Nebuchad- 
nezzar’s recovery from insanity by direct touch,” 
and Jonah’s grateful experience with that shady 
palm, and his remarkable preservation inside the 
huge fish.” 

*Exodus 15: 26. 

Exodus 23: 25-206. 

*r Kings 8: 37-38. 

*1 Kings 17: 17-24. 

52 Kings 4: 17-20, 32-37. 

®*2 Kings 5: 8-15. 

"2 Kings 20: 1-11; Isaiah 38: 1-21. 

*2 Chronicles 16: 12. 

* Daniel 4: 24-37. * Jonah 1: 17-2: 10, 4:6, 


Christ’s Will to Heal To-day 31 


David’s heart repeatedly rings out the same 
music in a sweetly rhythmic monotone.’ One bit 
in particular stands out for the fulness and 
richness of its tone.” Let me paraphrase it to 
make the meaning in David’s mind a bit closer 
home. 

Listen : 


‘‘Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; 

Who healeth all thy diseases ; 

Who keepeth thee from going down to the 
grave before thy full span of life is run 
out; 

Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and 
tender mercies; 

Who satisfieth thy matured years (when 
mental and spirit depression is apt to 
come) with the renewal of vigour until 
thou art as eager in spirit as an eagle 
soaring through the vast aerial heights.’’ 


Here are five things named. The first is 
spiritual. The fourth refers to the outer circum- 
stances of one’s life. The other three have dis- 
tinetly to do with bodily health and vigour. 

There’s a choice bit from the pen of the wisest 
man before he became the stupidest of moral 
fools.’ The revision gives this, ‘‘ a tranquil heart 
is the life of the flesh.’’ 

Literally it reads, ‘‘the life of the body? a 


1Psalms 6:2, 30:2, 3, 34:20, 41:2, 3 (a touch of the 
disciplinary side), 91: 3-7, 10-13. 

Psalm 103: I-5. 

® Proverbs 14: 30. 


32 About the Healing Christ 


quiet heart.’’? Our psychological friends would 
find much here for their side of things. 

The processes of grace are fascinating. Full 
touch with God gives the quiet heart that passeth 
mere mental understanding, and that in turn 
acts directly on all the bodily functions. 

And the trail runs eagerly ahead into the fu- 
ture glories never out of the Hebrew vision. 
The coming Messiah-King is to bring these 
physical blessings, along with all others. 

Isaiah’s exultant song of the coming day (in 
chapter thirty-five) may be taken as an index 
to the long list. The blind and the deaf, the 
lame and the dumb, will know all these disa- 
bilities completely gone.’ 

Rare Ezekiel’s remarkable river, from trick- 
ling beginnings to flood, carried exuberant phys- 
ical life and healing everywhere. And the leaves 
of the trees it fed would be a healing potion for 
all.’ 

The whole of these older pages makes one 
rhythmic answer to our question. They reveal 
plainly and graphically God’s attitude. He not 
only can heal, but it is His eager wish to do so. 
His love outruns His power. 

And always there’s the eager reaching through 
bodily healing to the deeper, the richer, the spirit 
healing. The disciplinary side of suffering is 
plain. It’s a wooing process. Through these 
silent pleadings and teachings of suffering God 
reaches in for the deeper. 


*Tsaiah 35:5, 6. 
? Ezekiel 47:9, 12, 


Christ’s Will to Heal To-day 33 
Teaching for Church Days. 


But there’s another bit of this old Book that 
concerns us people living now, most intimately. 
These older pages reveal the one unchanging 
God. He is ever the same. 

But there’s a book of illustrations of this 
same God which belongs peculiarly to us. It is 
distinctively the Church book of the Bible. I 
refer, of course, to the Book of Acts, with the 
Epistles woven. in, and the Revelation knot on 

the end. 

- In the Gospels Christ reveals the heart of the 
Father. He gives the meaning vividly of these 
Old Testament pages. The Acts continues the 
story, for all the peoples, of all the world, who 
come into living touch of heart with Christ. 

Acts is the sequel to the Gospels. The Gos- 
pels are sample pages of the coming Kingdom 
time, Acts sample pages of the Church time. 
Each covers a generation of time. 

In the Gospels the King is pleading for ac- 
eceptance. His ministry is an eloquent plea. In 
all He does, He is saying, ‘‘this is a bit of what 
the Kingdom is like.’’ But the King is rejected, 
and goes voluntarily to the Cross to give His 
life out for men, and for their sins. 

Then something new comes in. It is never 
spoken of in the Old Testament. It fills in the 
interregnum until the King shall bring in the 
Kingdom. The messenger-nation fails. 

Now, a new group is formed to be God’s new 
messenger to the race. It is called the Church, 
the ‘‘taken-out’’ group. It is formed of all be- 


34 About the Healing Christ 


lievers in Christ, both Jew and non-Jew, by the 
Holy Spirit’s presence. 

There’s a natural contrast or comparison be- 
tween the Gospels and the Acts. The Gospels 
are Kingdom pages; the Acts the Church book. 
Acts runs through a generation of time, roughly 
thirty-three years. 

Then it breaks abruptly off, as though each 
generation of the Church should carry on the 
story, until Christ comes for the next step in 
His racial program. 

In the Gospels healing has the foremost place 
in Christ’s activity. But it does not come into 
prominence until Christ’s rejection by the lead- 
ers is quite clear. There’s over a year of wait- 
ing for national acceptance. Then Christ’s of- 
ficial herald is imprisoned. That means Christ’s 
own rejection. 

Now, Christ turns to Galilee, unofficial Galilee, 
despised by the cultured Jerusalem leaders. He 
begins preaching and teaching and healing the 
crowds, and training the inner group of dis- 
ciples. 

When the national rejection of His Messiah- 
ship is quite clear He turns to the personal side 
of the Messiah’s work. Healing now takes the 
prominent place. It is through healing that He 
first gets the great thronging crowds. 

In the Acts healing has a distinet place, but 
on the whole not as prominent a place as in the 
Gospels. It becomes one feature only of the 
gracious ministry described, and of the power 
experienced. It 2s one feature. It is quite dis- 


Christ’s Will to Heal To-day 35 


tinct in itself. Yet it becomes one feature with 
the others. 

There are five summaries. These indicate that 
vast crowds experienced healing. All sorts of 
cases were included, great power clearly in ac- 
tion, and a deep abiding spiritual effect on the 
people. 

There are eight individual instances of heal- 
ing. One would be classed as acute. One was 
the supernatural protection from a deadly viper. 
Six are incorrigible incurables: twice lameness 
from birth, one of forty years standing; once 
long-standing palsy ; twice the dead are brought 
back to life; and possibly Paul’s recovery from 
stoning would be included with this last item. 

There are two outstanding centres of healing 
activity, Jerusalem the Jew centre, and Ephe- 
sus the Galilean or non-Jewish centre. The 
Jerusalem activity is at the beginning, and the 
Ephesus activity distinctly toward the close, of 
_ the Acts period. 

At Jerusalem great crowds are healed, great 
healing power is in evidence, and great spiritual 
blessing is connected with the healing. 

At Ephesus the activity runs through two full 
years. The power in evidence is quite unusual, 
to a very marked degree. And the spiritual 
power in men’s lives is quite pronounced. 

Ephesus was the strategic center of Asia 
Minor. The message preached, and the power 
revealed there, went out to all parts of Asia 
Minor, and across the seas in every direction. 

It is striking to mark that healing has greater 


36 About the Healing Christ 


prominence in the record, in the space given it, 
at the beginning of Acts. Practically it tallies 
with the story of the Gospels. It continues a dis- 
tinet part of the activity clear to the abrupt end- 
ing of the Acts. 

But one is conscious that it becomes one fea- 
ture with others. The absorbing thing here is 
the preaching of the crucified risen Christ. The 
healing becomes one manifestation with others 
of the power of the risen Christ. 

Yet, there is no suggestion of the lessening 
of the power in healing, nor of minimizing its 
place. For it is toward the close of the Acts 
period that the unusual story comes of the 
young man who fell down dead out of the win- 
dow at Troas, and is restored to life. And the 
outstanding Ephesus campaign is likewise to- 
ward the close. It is merely a shift of propor- 
tionate emphasis. 

The Epistles fit into the pages of Acts, and 
are most intelligently read and understood as 
they are read in that way. They run side by 
side with Acts, with Revelation coming a bit 
later as the knot on the end of the whole. 

Corinth becomes the strategic centre of Euro- 
pean activity, as Ephesus is the strategic centre 
of the Asiatic. And as Ephesus had a special 
message of healing activity, Corinth sends out a 
special message of healing teaching. 

Much space is given to the active ministry of 
the whole group of disciples in Corinth. It was 
clearly an active church centre, with the power 
of the Holy Spirit distinctly marked. 


Christ’s Will to Heal To-day 37 


Distinct prominence is given to teaching 
about healing. Clearly healing was a blessed 
commonplace in the experience of these 
Corinthian Christians. And many among them 
had marked power in this regard in ministering 
to those in bodily suffering. 

Healing is spoken of as one of the nine or 
more special gifts of the Holy Spirit. It was 
one of the gifts. There were other gifts. It 
was given to some, but not to all. 

Here is the same sense of proportionate em- 
phasis as in the Book of Acts. It was a blessed 
gift, one of several. Paul is putting special 
emphasis on poise in teaching, keeping things 
well balanced, in due proportion. 

Toward the close of this Acts-Paul period there 
are distinct touches of some not healed. Paul’s 
thorn comes in here. These will come in for 
treatment in the story of ‘‘ God’s School of 
Suffering,’’* touching the disciplinary side of 
suffering. 

The thing to mark just now is that they in no 
way change or affect the main teaching about 
healing. They simply give light to keep things 
in poise. 

From of old, a common teaching has been that 
miracles ceased long ago, and are not to be ex- 
pected. And this is quoted regarding healing. 

This Book of Acts, with the interwoven 
Epistles, gives the clear answer. The inter- 
woven Acts and Epistles make up the Church 
book, indicating what is meant to be the blessed 


See Chapter 7. 


38 About the Healing Christ 


commonplace clear to the end of the Church 
period. 

F'rom the outer non-Jewish world, where these 
letters mostly take us, there is a quick turn back 
to things at the Jew centre. 

The first Bishop of Jerusalem reveals the 
custom and the teaching that continued in the 
old mother Church. There was plainly no 
lessening of the teaching there, nor of the blessed 
experience. 

Then the circle of this wondrous old twin-book 
of God swings back to the starting point. There’s 
a garden at both ends, Genesis and Revelation. 
God’s ideal persists clear to the end, and becomes 
real, actual. 

The tree of life has become a grove of trees. 
The garden has become a garden-city. All the 
fine simplicity of the country and the garden is 
coupled with all the fine true culture for which 
the city characteristically stands. 

And here is the same winsome touch regarding 
our bodies. Sickness and pain, tears and death, 
mourning and erying, these are gone, clean worn 
out. The trees of life bear monthly harvests, 
and their leaves, like Ezekiel’s, are for healing.’ 


The Answer of the Book. 


All this is simply giving us a picture of God, 
a portrait in oil, in warm living colours. And 
that is the one point of the question we’re talk- 
ing about. 

What sort of a God is He? What is He will- 


* James 5: 13-15. ? Revelation 21: 4, 22: I-2. 


Christ’s Will to Heal To-day 39 


ing to do? It is not a question of power, but of 
His willingness, His purpose. Not can He? 
But will He? . 

The picture in the Old Testament is quite 
enough to answer the question. The warmer 
living colours of a Man actually living in touch, 
underscores the answer in bright red colouring. 

The tenderness, the sympathetic heart, the 
eagerness of God, takes hold of one’s heart with 
a grip as His Only-Begotten actually becomes 
one of us. 

And so we come back to that sentence put in 
at the first. Jt is God’s first will that we should 
be pure in heart, gripped by a nobly strong pur- 
pose, poised in our understanding of things, hu- 
manly gentle in our personal contacts, at sweet 
peace within, content wm circumstances, and 
hearty and healthy in our bodies. 

But note that word ‘‘first,’’ God’s first will. 
There will be a Quiet Talk devoted entirely to 
the meaning of that word ‘“‘first.’’ That’s a 
doorway into God’s schoolroom.’ 

Christ does heal to-day. It is His eager will 
to do so, and to do it now. One may reach out 
his hand, and have what he needs of this sort, 
now as he is reading, so far as God’s side 1s con- 
cerned. 

If there be any delay, it need not be longer 
than it takes for a man to come into simple full 
touch of heart and life. 

In healing Christ is thinking of two things, 
always two. The first presses in most with us, 


*See Chapter 7. 


40 About the Healing Christ 


if we’re needing it, maybe needing it sorely. 
The second is really the thing of greater mean- 
ing. 

Christ wants to heal our bodies. He wants to 
heal our spirits, our lives, our real selves. He 
wants to do the first, but in such a way as to 
inelude the greater thing, the second. 

The first is delayed sometimes, oftentimes, 
until we are willing for the second, too. But the 
length of the delay is fixed by us. Christ ea- 
gerly reaches out to do both for each of us now. 

There is one exception to be noted in all this 
teaching. We are never promised immunity 
from bodily death. There are the three instances 
in the Gospels of the dead restored, and two, 
possibly a third, in the Acts. 

Yet, the plain teaching throughout does not 
include this. A bit of the promise definitely 
made is, that through the touch of Christ on the 
body, the full span of natural life will be filled 
out.’ 

So far as death itself is concerned the resur- 
rection of our bodies at some future day is 
plainly taught for those believers who do not 
live until Christ’s return. The teaching does not 
go beyond these two items. 

Now a bit from the other book, the book of 
illustrations, the Book of Life. 

A friend of mine told me a bit of his experi- 
ence of bodily healing. It’s a double story. He 
is a business man, still living, well known in the 


*Note Psalm 103:4 f. c. see paraphrase already 
given, Exodus 23:26. Deuteronomy 4:40, 32:47. 


Christ’s Will to Heal To-day 41 


city where he lives, and active in Christian serv- 
ice of the more spiritual sort. He is now prob- 
ably in his late fifties or early sixties. 

In his thirties he had a stroke of paralysis, as 
a result apparently of overwork. It affected one 
side. His arm hung limp though not wholly dis- 
abled. He could walk some, dragging his limb. 

The side of his face was affected. Through 
loss of self-control the spittle would ooze out of 
his mouth. He showed me his diary which he 
was still able to keep. But the writing on the 
- pages at this time was a scarcely legible scrawl. 

He went to a friend, a physician, who taught 
that Christ heals by direct touch as of old. The 
friend made a very simple brief prayer for his 
healing. And my friend limped out of the oth- 
er’s home as he had limped in, and started back 
to his own home. 

As he was painfully dragging his foot along 
he felt a sense of warmth come into his body, 
running through his affected side, down the arm, 
and as though out at his finger-tips. And he 
knew the healing touch had come. 

He entered his home with his latch-key, and 
his wife came running to meet him, and then 
stopped short as she looked, startled, and said, 
‘Oh, Frank, you have been healed !’’ 

My friend had unusually intimate relations 
with his pastor who lived near him. The pastor 
had suffered for years from heart trouble. He 
had applied repeatedly for life insurance with 
various companies. But had always been re- 
jected because of his heart. 


42  ~About the Healing Christ 


Now, my friend went to see his pastor, and 
told his story of what had just occurred to him. 
And there was a time of praise and prayer to- 
gether. 

The pastor was the more deeply impressed 
because of his own need. Much time was spent 
alone in his study on his knees with the open 
Bible. And he had evidence within that led him 
to believe the healing touch had come. 

Again he applied for life insurance, was ex- 
amined with the usual rigid care, and now was 
accepted, and the insurance written. 

_ He began to speak of healing in his preaching. 

But it was not acceptable to his denominational — 
leaders. And so it was not taught in any out- 
standing way, and gradually slipped out of his 
preaching. 

He afterward became president of a leading 
Methodist university, and later was made bishop, 
and was prominent in the broader counsels and 
activity of his communion. I had the privilege 
of his personal acquaintance in the after years. 

My friend, a quiet-spoken methodical business 
man, told me the story quietly, with a business 
man’s care in details. He has led a very busy 
life since, and seems to be in perfect health. 

It seems like an added page of the unfinished 
Book of Acts. Clearly there would be many 
more such pages added if our great Christ had 
His way with us. 


IIl 


DOES GOD SEND SICKNESS AND 
DISEASE? 


It is God’s first will that every man be clean 
in heart, in the grip of a noble purpose, clear 
in understanding of things, at peace within 
himself, gentle in spirit, happy in circumstances, 
and strong and vigorous in his body. 


_Essentials and Incidentals. 


CHRIST was a man of power, and is. This is 
His distinctive characteristic. It was power un- 
der the driving control of love, and is. 

The religion of Christ is a religion of power. 
This is its outstanding feature. It was through 
this that it won its way in the beginning, in the 
bitter competition with old entrenched religions. 
It was this that blazed its pioneer way into every 
nation and civilization where it has gone. 

It is a power clearly above any power men 
were accustomed to. It is distinctly more and 
greater than men had known. It rose above 
power working commonly through familiar 
natural channels. 

And so it is called supernatural power. It 
was plainly claimed to be the power of Christ 
Himself, and of God back of and through Christ, 
at work through natural channels. 

And always it came into play to help men. 
The help was sorely needed. Men were power- 
less to do what was needed. 


44, About the Healing Christ 


This more-than-natural power of Christ, and 
of the religion of Christ, met men’s sore need, 
and met it with a strange glad fulness. It was 
this distinctive trait that opened the doors and 
hearts and lives where the power was felt and 
seen. 

Christianity is not a code of ethics, simply. 
It is that, plainly. It leaves all other codes trail- 
ing behind. Indeed there is pretty clear evi- 
dence that all these other codes sprang out of 
the mother roots of Christianity. 

But, by comparison, this is merely a by- 
product, a blessed by-product. The distinctive 
thing is that Christianity is a religion of super- 
natural power. 

It is not merely a system of culture. Very 
clearly it is that. The Holy Spirit’s sway in a 
life brings the rarest culture of character and 
conduct. It leads to the truest culture of mind 
and personality and life. And this multiplied 
in many individual lives makes a rarely cultured 
community. 

Its culture is the real thing, culture of heart 
and motive and behaviour and outreach to oth- 
ers. It clean out-cultures all other cultures, fa- 
miliar to man. Its culture, at root, planted and 
fertilized all real culture wherever and when- 
ever found. The evidence regarding this is 
abundant and clear. 

But, in comparison with this other trait com- 
mon to true Christianity, its culture is an inci- 
dental, a winsome wondrous incidental. The es- 
sential trait goes deeper in, and reaches farther 


Does God Send Sickness? AS 


out. Its power to transform personal life stands 
first and alone. 

Christianity is not a teaching and a philosophy 
only. It surely is a teaching. It is a tremen- 
dous, a pervasive and satisfying philosophy. 

All men, and all philosophers, and all nations, 
that know it gladly burn their incense at the 
altars of its teaching and its philosophy, the 
incense of words, and the greater incense of 
imitation. 

There is the best of evidence for believing that 
‘the directly untraceable tendrils of all other 
philosophies and teachings run back to the 
Hebraic roots whence Christianity grew. 

And this is still true, regardless of the strange 
unhallowed admixtures in these other systems. 
By common consent the teaching and philosophy 
of Christianity clear overtops all others. 

Yet, be it keenly marked, again this is not the 
chief thing in Christianity. There is something 
greater back of this. It is so much greater as 
to have no second. 

It’s in a class by itself. Christianity is a thing 
of more-than-natural, more-than-human, power. 
It reveals God’s own power in action through 
natural human channels. 

There is even a stronger word to add here. 
Christianity is not a humanitarianism, a scheme 
for bettering world conditions, simply. It is 
that, clear beyond what can be told. 

A simple quick run back in history to pre- 
Christian times, and a quick run owt to non- 
Christian civilizations to-day, makes a startling 


46 About the Healing Christ 


contrast between nations that have come in any 
degree under Christian influence, near or re- 
mote, and the others. 

Humanitarianism in all its blessed forms, and 
the unselfish bettering of outer conditions, stand 
out so big under Christian touch as to seem al- 
most absent elsewhere. 

Yet the distinct though faint traces elsewhere, 
even though untraceable directly, bear every 
mark of springing from the same old Eden- 
Hebrew-Christian rootage. Christ’s human- 
itarianism is the root actually of all this sort of 
thing. 

Yet, a moment’s clear, sharp thinking makes 
quite plain that these blessed things that have 
meant so much, and do beyond all calculation, 
are still—yes, again the word comes—incidentals. 

They are the sweet, refreshing fragrance of 
the rose. The rose itself, creating fragrance, 
and lavishingly breathing it out into the sweet- 
ened air, this is quite another thing. The rose 
is always immeasurably greater than the 
fragrance it gives unselfishly out to all comers. 


Power the Distinctive Trait. 


Christianity itself, in its one outstanding char- 
acteristic, is immeasurably more than the hu- 
manitarianism it initiates and keeps going. Its 
singular outstanding trait is its supernatural 
power, found nowhere else. It does what no 
other does or can do. It stands solitary and 
alone in this. 

And, and, are you listening with your inner 


Does God Send Sickness? 47 


ears? And, if and when, it loses this, in our 
understanding and our teaching of it, the es- 
sence is gone. 

The fragrance is here; the rose is gone. What 
fragrance there is is what lingers from past con- 
tact with the real thing. How long will it linger 
with its source cut off? 

If and when our Christianity becomes a code 
of ethics merely, a culture and only that, a 
teaching and philosophy and nothing more, a 
blessed humanitarianism and bettering of outer 
‘conditions of life, and that simply, the distinc- 
tive trait has gone. 

The rose is severed from the fragrance. The 
life has gone out of the body, even with some 
colour in the cheek, and some muscular move- 
ments in the limbs. 

The tendrils are severed from the life-giving 
roots. The Christian religion has been dragged 
down to the level of mere man-made religion, so 
far as the leaders can do that. 

All these other things, so blessed in themselves, 
are mere by-products of Christianity, incidentals. 
One had almost said, trifling incidentals, by 
comparison, though so invaluable in themselves. 

Christianity is distinctively, idiomatically, a 
thing of power, supernatural power, God’s own 
direct touch through human natural channels. 
The lustful man is made pure. The slave of evil 
habit is set free. 

The thief becomes honest. The trifler becomes 
earnest, in the hard grip of a noble purpose. 
The drunkard is sobered, and stays sober. The 


48 About the Healing Christ 


demon-tortured man knows sweet peace. The 
diseased is made perfectly whole. 

Where there had been a man in the house, now 

there’s a loving husband, and a thoughtful fa- 
ther, in a home. And the shop or store, the 
neighbourhood, the community, the nation, each 
knows a radical difference, a new personality, 
strong, gentle, pervasive, insistent. 
- The religion of the solitary God-Man who 
died, and then revealed unprecedented and un- © 
paralleled power, uncopiable by others, in 
emptying that new-hewn tomb of rock, itis a 
religion of supernatural power. It is a power 
unexplainable except by taking God into ac- 
count. 

It makes changes in man. It changes things 
at the core. Then all becomes changed. All 
history and all observation and all experience 
make clear enough that those changes can’t be 
made by any other than Christ Himself. But 
Christ does. He only can. Christianity is dis- 
tinetively a religion of supernatural power. 

The one purpose of foreign missionary activity 
is to carry this message of the Christ, to our 
racial kinsmen across the sea who haven’t heard. 

It is distinctively the message of a Christ who 
died as none other did, nor could, nor ean, and 
then lived again through supernatural power, 
and still lives, with that same supernatural 
power available to-day to purify the heart, 
transform the life, and meet every common need. 

This was the one burning passion and pur- 
pose of the early missionary activity, and still 


Does God Send Sickness? 49 


is, where the Christ spirit sways. It burns so 
hotly and grips so strongly that all else seems 
the merest incidental. 

There is an “‘‘ else.’? There are incidentals. 
There are humanitarian activities immeasurably 
valuable and sorely needed. ‘There are some 
things worked out by Western science that will 
alleviate living conditions over yonder. And 
that sort of thing is surely sorely needed. Yet 
there needs to. be discrimination. And wise dis- 
crimination sometimes seems scarce. 

It is no part of the Christian missionary 
scheme to transplant Western civilization into 
Oriental lands. The Orient has a culture of its 
own, that even some of us Occidentals think 
fully equal to the best true Western culture, at 
least, and in some things distinctly superior. 

If our missionary activity become a mere 
transplanting of certain features of the Western 
hemisphere to lHastern and_ sub-equatorial 
lands, it at once loses its distinetive historical 
Christian characteristic. The essence has 
gone. 

If the door opened with such sacrifice by the 
early heroic missionaries becomes an entrance 
for some common features of our Western civi- 
lization, if it become a means of spreading 
Western skepticism and doubt under Christian 
phraseology, it is surely the Devil using that 
door. Such use makes the door a distinct curse, 
so far. 

The motive for such sacrifice as the true 
Christian missionary gladly makes, though it 


50 ‘About the Healing Christ 


takes his life’s blood slowly given out, that mo- 
tive is quite gone. 

The true Christian message lived and taught 
on foreign-mission soil, in the supernatural 
power of the Holy Spirit, will work out certain 
results. 

Out of it will grow naturally the true Chris- 
tian culture. And out of that will grow the 
mental regeneration that will affect daily life 
and conditions. And our racial brothers yonder 
will be distinctly better off with none other, ex- 
cept some products of Western science already 
alluded to. 

Nowhere is the distinctively supernatural 
power of Christ revealed more than in this, that 
men’s bodies are healed. It was so in Christ’s 
day on earth. It was so in the early Church 
days. It is so to-day. Christ is still and ever 
the same. 

Of course, there is opposition to such a Christ, 
and to such a religion. It was marked in 
Christ’s day. It was bitter, incorrigible, ma- 
licious, and at last murderous. 


A False Common Impression. 


That opposition hasn’t ceased. It has merely 
changed its outer form. It has grown more 
cultured on the outside, but the inside is the 
same. 

One phase of this opposition is the teaching 
that God sends sickness and disease. The bald 
statement gives an ugly impression of God that 
stings and stays. It hurts and it lasts. 


Does God Send Sickness? 51 


There comes a dread, an inner deep dread of 
a God of resistless power who actually does such 
a thing. This is so even among saintly Chris- 
tians, far more than is suspected. 

Its practical effect has been to act as a check 
to the working in men’s lives of that super- 
natural power of Christ. The hand doesn’t 
reach out to take what the Pierced Hand is ea- 
gerly reaching down to give. 

There is a deep-seated impression that we can- 
not ask for healing. We must settle down and 
make the best of a bad thing. And meanwhile 
pray to be patient and resigned. 

Psychologically this becomes an unconscious 
incalculable influence in actually tightening the 
hold of disease on one’s body. Practically it 
makes a hindrance in the working of God’s rare 
supernatural power in our bodies, and in our 
lives. 

‘Well, it was her time to go, and so God sent 
her pneumonia.’?’ The words were spoken 
quietly, in a matter-of-fact way, and in a tone 
of finality. They were the answer to my sym- 
pathetic question about an earnest Christian 
woman in the prime of life who had died quite 
unexpectedly. 

I wondered if my startled ears heard aright. 
But my wife verified their accuracy. The 
woman who spoke the words was an earnest 
Christian, of much more than average culture. 
Several of her family circle were college-bred, 
and the home had an unusual supply of high- 
class modern books of various sorts. 


52 About the Healing Christ 


In later conversation a neighbour of hers, who 
did not share her belief in this regard, remarked 
that such was quite a common thought in all the 
countryside thereabouts. And in varying de- 
gree one finds such impression deep-seated 
everywhere. 

And, there are statements in the Scriptures 
that can be distorted, and disconnected, to give 
such an impression. That is, I mean, with no 
intention of distorting, the Scriptures are read 
in a haphazard, disjointed way, and are quoted 
without regard to connection. And so such im- 
‘pressions gotten by hearsay are deepened. 


The Teaching of the Book. 


Let us take a brief look at the Book on this 
point. There’s a long list of passages that, taken 
by themselves, at first-flush, do give that im- 
pression. But as one reads them in connection 
with the whole teaching he feels ashamed so to 
have misunderstood God’s word, and really 
maligned, though unintentionally, God’s char- 
acter. 

When Abraham and Sarah went into Egypt 
it says plainly, ‘‘Jehovah plagued Pharaoh 
and his household with great plagues because 
of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.’’’ The word 
‘‘nlagues’’ here plainly means certain contagious 
diseases common in HKeypt. 

The whole story tells plainly why. God’s 
plan for the new nation hinged on Abraham, 
and even more on his wife, and on the family 


*Genesis 12: 10-20. 


Does God Send Sickness? 58 


stock being kept pure. It was really an 
emergency in the human plan being worked out. 
And the broader story tells the process which 
reverses the whole impression. Still the impres- 
sion is there, to the unthinking. 

There’s God’s dealings with Pharaoh in de- 
livering Israel from Egyptian slavery. One can- 
not go here into this whole story of judgment 
on the Egyptians for their conduct toward God, 
and toward these Hebrews. 

That’s another story, much misquoted, and 
often not thoughtfully read, and full of fasci- 
nating interest. It reveals in a notable way the 
natural process God follows in visiting judgment 
on wrong-doing. 

But it plainly says that it was through ‘‘the 
hand of the Lord’’ in direct action that the 
Egyptian cattle were fatally diseased, and the 
Hebrews’ cattle immune; the ulcerous boils upon 
the Egyptians themselves, and so on, through 
all the plagues that follow.’ 

One notes, of course, that this is all a dis- 
tinctly exceptional action, of judgment, in a 
erisis. It is not the normal run of things. Still 
the impression spoken of may remain if one 
doesn’t think the thing out as plainly taught. 
And so there is a string of similar passages.’ 

There is one exception to be noted, quite dis- 
tinct from all these others. That’s the story of 


*Exodus 9: 1-7, 8-12. 

*Exodus 15:25-26, 32: 35, Leviticus 10:1-2, Num- 
bers 11:1, 33, 12:9-1I5, 14:12, 36, 37, Deuteronomy 
28: 21, 22, 27, 35, 60, 61, and others. 


54 About the Healing Christ 


Jacob’s hip being put out of joint.’ One notes 
at once that it was not a disease, but a touch that 
affected the normal action of his body, his walk- 
ing. 

It slowed him up, and became a constant re- 
minder that he had been walking the wrong 
way. And now, though his walking is slower, 
it is in God’s way, the only right way, and is so 
wholly because of that strange midnight touch. 
There is no wasted motion now. 

It stands out as an exception, at the extreme 
point of waiting by God, after all other means 
had failed. Jacob was an unusually stubborn 
man. It was for service’ sake, and was in an 
emergency in God’s world plan, of which this 
man was the human center. It will be spoken 
of again in the Talk on ‘‘God’s School of Suffer- 
ing.”’ 


The Protected Zone. 


Now, there are two things to note sharply 
here in order to keep the poise, to get things 
straight and clear. And they are two common 
things, well understood and emphasized in the 
pages of this book. 

The first, and less thing is this, that any break 
with God takes one away from the protection of 
His presence, and so automatically exposes him 
to whatever conditions surround him. 

The natural thing is keeping in touch with 
God. His mere presence, in unbroken touch, is 
a continual protection from ills that surround 


*Genesis 32: 24-32. 


Does God Send Sickness? 55 


us. His touch upon us, it is this that keeps our 
bodies strong, and functioning naturally and 
vigorously. 

This teaching is like an ever-present under- 
tone through the older pages of the Book. It 
was true from Eden on before the main story 
of the Book was lived out and written down. 
It is true to-day. This is the continual back- 
ground of all the Old Testament teaching about 
bodily conditions. 

One simple illustration may help. But it is 
merely one bit from a flood of passages. It is 
given because it is a picture, pictured teaching. 
It is an open window into the whole house of 
the Book. 

It is the graphically told story of the un- 
named prophet in the First Book of Kings." He 
had been sent to*King Jeroboam, in a very crit- 
ical time, with a message, and with detailed in- 
structions as to his own conduct. Clearly his 
own conduct in the particulars named was to 
be an acted-out bit of the message. 

Another prophet, clearly merely a professional 
prophet, jealously deceived the man with God’s 
message, who accordingly disobeyed God’s ex- 
plicit instructions. Then the unnamed prophet 
returning home, by the way he was distinctly 
bidden by God not to take, is slain by a lion. 

The whole story is dramatically told in much 
detail of an intensely interesting sort. And is 
evidently told fully for the teaching it contains. 
For the whole nation knew the story by the 


*t Kings 13. 


56 About the Healing Christ 


universal grape-vine means of communication, 
and discussed it from door to door. 

And the bit of teaching that belongs in just 
now is simply this: this unnamed prophet, in 
disobeying God’s implicit directions, had gone 
out of the protected zone. 

In touch with God he was in the protected 
zone. No evil could befall him in the simple 
path of obedience. He was protected. When 
he went out of that path he was exposed to the 
dangers always there. 

The true natural human life is meant to be 
lived in simple touch of heart and life with God. 
Anything else is abnormal, unnatural. When 
in touch one is constantly protected and pre- 
served and strengthened, in body and circum- 
stance and life. 

Break with God, either partial or full, ex- 
poses one to whatever there is of evil, and to 
the Evil One. And, it is an unhappy common- 
place that so many Christians, confessedly, do 
not live in that full simple intelligent touch with 
Christ in all their affairs. 

This is one bit of teaching. It is the back- 
ground of all teaching in the Old Testament 
especially. Unhappily it is missed so much in 
the haphazard, unconnected, choppy reading of 
the old Book, so common in pew and pulpit, 
home and study. 

It is a striking thing that the Bible, taken as 
a whole, is always self-explanatory Any ques- 
tion raised at any place in it as to the meaning 
is always answered somewhere else in the Book. 


Does God Send Sickness? 57 


And every thoughtful, serious question has an 
answer here somewhere. If only we would read 
it, and read it intelligently as a whole, one con- 
nected book, it would flood us with its light at 
every turn. 

But the second thing stands out in plain open 
day before all eyes. It is the bigger thing of 
the two. It is the Book of Job. The story of 
Job deals directly with this question of sickness 
and disease, the source, and more the purpose. 

It stands at the front door of the Bible. It 
’ was first of all in its writing. It is put there 
in plain sight that we might understand at once 
this sorest of all questions, suffering, and why 
allowed. 

It tells plainly that the troubles that came to 
Job, including his ulcerous boils at the last, 
came directly from Satan.’ Though Job him- 
self didn’t so understand, and ascribed them to 
God.’ 

They came distinctly by God’s permission. 
There were sharply defined limits to Satan’s 
activity, beyond which he could not, dare not, 
go. There was a purpose of God in the per- 
mission He gave. It was distinctly a purpose of 
love. Then the healing came.’ And the gracious 
flood of blessing that followed made the days of 
his earlier prosperity seem tame. 

That in a word, just now, is the Job story. 

*Job 1: 12-10, 2:6-7. 

7Job 1: 20-21, 2: Io. 

* Job 1:12, middle clause, 2: 6. 


*See Job 33:15-25, see paraphrase in Chapter 7, 
“God’s School of Suffering.” Job 42: 10-17. 


58 About the Healing Christ 


It comes in for more in the Talk on ‘‘God’s 
School of Suffering.’’ 

But the teaching could not be clearer. It 
answers our present question. It answers it 
fully and plainly. And the teaching stands at 
the front door of God’s Book, that all who will 
simply read thoughtfully may understand. Of 
course, it must be confessed that reading the 
Book of God is just a bit scarce, and reading it 
thoughtfully just a bit scarcer. 


The Source of Disease. 





‘Put in plain words here is the answer of the 
Book of God. God does not send disease and 
sickness. There are five things to be said about 
their source. 

They come through some open door of dis- 
obedience to the laws of the body, either a con- 
scious or an unconscious disobedience 

Or, they may come directly from Satan, but 
always through some open door on the human 
side. Or, they may come through God’s re- 
straint being withdrawn. 

Or, they may come through the general break 
of sin affecting the whole fabric of life. Or, 
there may be a blend of two or more of these. 

In each case there must be an open door of 
some sort on the human side. But, then, the 
open doors are certainly on every hand in great 
abundance. 

So far as the disciplinary side of bodily suf- 
fering is concerned, God has no need to send 
disease. There are plenty of doors of disobedi- 


Does God Send Sickness? 59 


ence standing invitingly open to disease. There 
is no disobedience so common as disobedience of 
the common laws of health. 

This is so among the most earnest Christians, 
the saintliest folk. There will be more said about 
this in the Talk on ‘‘The Human Side of Health 
and Healing.”’ 

We seem not to think into the common fact 
that breaking a law of one’s body, though not 
against a moral law, yet takes on a distinctly 
moral quality. The laws of health are God’s 
laws for the body, as really as moral laws are 
His for the life. 

God’s healing, it will be remembered, is three- 
fold. There is a protective restraint of which 
one may be quite unaware. One’s person is pro- 
tected. There’s a distinct restraint on the dis- 
ease just at hand threatening. 

There is the life-giving, health-giving touch 
upon one’s body, giving vigour and full function- 
ing. And of this touch one is usually quite un- 
aware. The very absence of bodily ills and 
weakness should be cause for praise. It reveals 
Christ’s direct touch, where the body is com- 
mitted to His care. 

And, then, when sickness or disease actually 
comes, perhaps through some door left inad- 
vertently open, or otherwise, there may be the 
positive supernatural healing touch. 

When one is led to meet some emergency that 
taxes or exposes the health unduly special 
strength will be given. But one should be very 
clear of his leading here. Once that is quite 


60 About the Healing Christ 


clear one pushes confidently on, depending on 
our unfailing Christ for bodily strength, as for 
all else. | 

But one should guard carefully his bodily 
doors, as all others. There is a spirit warfare 
on. And one needs to be constantly on guard. 
In a wholesome, sane, thoughtful way one should 
guard all the doorways of his life, of every sort. 
This is especially true of those wholly in Chris- 
tian service. 

John Ruskin tells a simple incident of his 
childhood days, that illustrates in part what we 
are talking about. He was present one after- 
noon when tea was being served. 

The copper hot-water kettle was bright, and 
caught the child’s eye. He wanted to touch it, 
and reached out his hand. The nurse in at- 
tendance on the child told him not to. The boy 
persisted, and the nurse also persisted. 

By and by the mother said quietly, ‘‘ Nurse, 
let him touch it.’’ He did, for a very brief 
moment. His curiosity was quickly satisfied. 
His attention was turned from the kettle to the 
finger. 

The child’s ignorant persistence in having his 
own way, regardless of the expressed wish of 
those in authority, was deliberately yielded to 
for a purpose. The restraint was withdrawn. 
The act of touching the kettle contained its own 
punishment in the pain that came. The child 
had learned something. His desire to touch 
shining copper kettles was satisfied ever after. 

But some of us haven’t as much sense in 


Does God Send Sickness? 61 


other similar things. We still want to touch the 
shiny kettle. God’s commands and laws are 
never arbitrary. He doesn’t simply want to be 
obeyed because He has the right to be. Though 
when you come to know Him, you recognize 
that this would be quite sufficient in itself. 

But there’s always a reason for our well-being 
involved. God would keep us from touching 
the hot kettle, because it will burn. This prin- 
ciple underlies every law and commandment of 
God to us. 

An English friend told us of an experience 
she had. She was engaged in missionary work 
in Algiers, on the Mediterranean, at the time. 
An emergency led to her nursing a typhus 
patient for a brief time under quarantine regu- 
lations. 

Then the patient was taken to the hospital. 
Our friend bathed, changed her garments, taking 
every precaution known to her, and retired for 
much needed sleep. She had a dream, unusually 
vivid and distinct in detail. 

In her dream she was out riding, and saw a 
conflict going on between one of her missionary 
associates and three persons. She seemed to 
know instinctively that one of these three was 
the Devil himself. 

She hastened forward to help her associate, 
but a dart was sent by one of the group of three. 
And her associate fell as she came between them. 
Almost mechanically she prayed, repeating the 
words ‘‘the power of the blood of Jesus.’’ 

At once the three fell back. Then they came 


62 ‘About the Healing Christ 


again to the attack. Again she prayed, repeat- 
ing that same phrase, but apparently without 
realizing its full significance and power. And 
again the three fell back. 

The third time they pressed up in attack. 
Then it came to her swiftly, with an intense 
sense of reality, just what power there was in 
that prayer, pleading ‘‘the power of the blood 
of Jesus.’’ 

Pleading it now boldly, strongly, insistently, 
the three crouched down and back as though 
struck. Then slowly, reluctantly, but surely, 
they disappeared. And her associate was free 
of their power. 

That was the unusual dream. It stood out 
with singular distinctness. She awakened, and 
found herself in a high fever. Then the sig- 
nificance of the dream seemed borne in upon her. 

She engaged in prayer, in tense insistent 
prayer, pleading the power of the blood of Jesus. 
Then sleep came quiet and deep. When she 
awakened the fever was quite gone. Her pulse 
and temperature were normal. She was quite 
cool and well. And with grateful heart she 
went about her day’s task. 

Let us keep in touch of heart and life with 
Christ, guard jealously all the doors, set our- 
selves to keep in that protected zone of obedi- 
ence, and, when the need comes go at once to 
Christ. 

Christ is waiting now, at your side, with the 
touch of supernatural power, to meet every need 
of body and life. 


IV 


HOW DOES CHRIST HEAL? THE CONDI- 
TIONS: THE METHOD: THE 
USE OF MEANS 


It is Christs first will for His followers, 
that they be pure in heart, strongly, steadily 
passionate in purpose, poised in understanding 
and judgment, characteristically gentle in per- 
sonal touches, willing to be controlled in every- 
thing by the emergency of sin in the world, 
and healthful and vigorous in body, to His 
glory. 


Natural and Supernatural. 


Gop is chary of the supernatural. He is lavish 
in nature. Nature is God in action. He loves 
nature’s roads. He made them. He prefers 
them. 

He will not hesitate for a moment to do the 
supernatural when the need ealls for it. He 
will do a fresh act of creation, pure direct crea- 
tion, before a single line of His Word is allowed 
to fail. 

He will reach through and above the natural 
channels with the added touch before He will let 
one trusting child of His, in intelligent touch 
of heart and will, know disappointment. The 
flood of power, more than the usual thing, waits 
any emergency that plainly calls for it. 

But, God loves nature’s regular paths. They 

63 


64 About the Healing Christ 


are His own. Nature is God’s way of working 
things out. 

Christ avoids the sensational, the cheap, vul- 
gar, catchy-in-the-bad-sense sensational. On 
more than one occasion He was at pains to avoid 
the crowd gaping for some touch of this morbid 
sort of sensationalism. 

Though nothing is so sensational, in the good 
sense, aS God’s power in action in an unusual 
Way in some sore emergency. Christ’s miracu- 
lous healing created a tremendous sensation. 
And He made use of that sensation to teach of 
the Father’s eager love, and gentle patience, and 
lavish power. 

The supernatural has a touch of the spectacu- 
lar to us, because we are not used to it. It is 
unusual. It catches attention at onee. The 
natural hardly gets any attention, we are so 
used to it. 

Nature is simple and quiet. The things that 
mean most to us, and to our daily lives, come 
noiselessly, softly. They work modestly. No 
one ever heard the sun or the moon, busily at 
work keeping the whole order of nature in 
blessed rhythm for our sakes. 

The dew does its gracious work shyly. It’s 
the small, warm, gentle rain that the soil wel- 
comes most, and responds to most quickly. The 
air does its unfailing ministry so modestly we 
searcely ever think of its presence, till some foul 
intruder spoils its sweet odour and neutralizes its 
life-giving power. 

Truth is a Quaker. It wears a plain garb and 


How Does Christ Heal? 65 


talks in quiet gentle speech. It never calls at- 
tention to itself. It goes by almost unnoticed 
in the bustle of the street. But it breathes out 
a healthful atmosphere, and leaves a fragrant 
trail. 

Error wears flashy clothes. It talks in loud, 
boisterous tones. It blusters, and swaggers the 
full width of the sidewalk. And the crowd stops 
and stares, and wists not that the air had been 
befouled. Error steals some truth for wings, 


_ else it would fall dead flat at once. 


The Devil borrows truth’s clothes, without 
asking permission. He talks in a loud, positive, 
there’s-no-doubt-about-this voice. So men’s eyes 
and ears may be caught and befouled. 

The sheep-like quality persists in the race. 
Watch the flock of sheep. They’ll follow the 
bell-wether unhesitatingly, even over the side 
of the bridge into the rushing river. Cheap, 
noisy leadership quickly gets the crowd. 

Nature is simple. That’s God’s touch. Satan 
tangles things up. Truth is so simple as to 
seem too easy, sometimes. One instinctively says 
‘fof course.’’ Sin makes life’s problems com- 
plex. Truth is plain spoken and unpretentious. 
One becomes wary and weary of a cloud of 
words, many words, long, big-sounding words. 

Christ is chary of the supernatural. He is 
lavish in nature. He gives so lavishly all the 
time that there would be no need of the other, 
the extra, the supernatural, if it were not for 
the terrible emergency of life. 

Sin is forever setting life all askew, and mak- 


66 About the Healing Christ 


ing emergencies. A single touch of the super- 
natural quickly catches the eye. A flood of the 
natural, keeping the whole swing of life a-going, 
rarely gets a thought. 

Yet, though already so lavish in His habitual 
giving, and so thoughtful about giving outside 
of this, Christ is on the eager run to give the 
more-than-common touch of power, the super- 
natural, when need be, to meet the ever present 
emergency so common in life. 

Sin’s ravages are epidemic. There’s a wilful 
ignoring of the simple natural laws of the body. 
There’s an ignorant disregard of nature’s benefi- 
cent laws of action. There’s a constant need of 
the supernatural touch. And Christ thought- 
fully gives that touch in the way that will help 
us best and most. 

Our well-being, body and spirit, is precious to 
Him. The integrity of His pledged Word He 
holds sacred. He is on the heels of evil, like a 
flash, before any trusting child of His shall be 
disappointed, or a scratch of His Word allowed 
to slip. 


Helping So As Not to Hurt. 


We’ve been talking about Christ’s power in 
healing; what He can do. We’ve spoken of His 
love in healing; what He will do, and do with an 
eager gladness. 

Now, we want to talk a bit together about 
Christ’s wisdom in healing, the way in which 
He does heal. There’s a rare wisdom in Christ’s 
method in healing men’s bodies. 


How Does Christ Heal? 67 


There is nowhere that wisdom is so much 
needed, rarest wisdom, as in giving. Those en- 
gaged in giving help to others habitually, in a 
larger or smaller way, know well what a fine 
art is needed here if men are not to be hurt 
when they are needing help. 

To give so as to help, and help in the best 
way, and help only, not hurt, is a fine art in- 
deed. Nothing is more ticklishly difficult. 
Thoughtless giving is cheap and common, lazy 
and hurtful. Love is always thoughtful, though 
it cost more. But love ignores the cost even 
when it must be counted. 

In His healing, Christ is thinking always of 
two things, the immediate need and the deeper 
need, the body, and the man himself living in 
the body. 

Often helping the deeper need meets the 
bodily need too, and meets it in the best way. 
The glad, intelligent surrender to Christ as a 
Master brings certain changes in one’s habits. 
And this in turn radically affects the body and 
the health, oftentimes. 

Often Christ’s touch upon the life prepares 
the way for the touch upon the body. It does 
yet more. It leads to the intelligent thinking 
into things. And this in turn leads to such 
obedience to the laws of the body as to prevent a 
recurrence of the bodily trouble. 

Sometimes that obedience is very simple. 
Sometimes it is radical. It may mean breaking 
old habits in such common things as eating and 
sleeping and the methodical daily round, And 


68 “About the Healing Christ 


health and healing are very dependent on these 
common things. 

Christ is love. And nowhere is love more put 
to it to be really helpful than in giving. The 
tangle of sin has come in to blur men’s eyes, and 
teeter their judgment this way or that, and espe- 
cially to make the will twisted and abnormally 
set in its way. 

There are two things to note keenly here, as 
to how Christ heals. There are two ‘‘hows,”’ 
the how of conditions and the how of method. 

The conditions underlie all else. This has to 
do with one’s touch with Christ. The method 
has to do with the healing itself, the way it’s 
done. 

The physician and the sick man must get into 
touch. Christ and the man needing Christ’s 
healing power must get together. 

Some have supposed that saintliness is the re- 
quirement for the healing touch. They have 
supposed that the saintly may come and expect 
the healing touch; but hardly others. 

Well, of course, the closer the touch the bet- 
ter. And saintliness practically means simply a 
close touch, the habitual close touch. 

But it isn’t the saintliness that heals, nor be- 
cause there is enough of it. There must be 
touch, of course. But it is Christ, Christ’s 
blood, that heals. 

It is never because of any merit in us such as 
saintliness suggests. It is through the contact, 
however saintly it may be or not, that Christ’s 
healing power comes in. 


How Does Christ Heal? 69 


The *‘How’’ of Conditions. 


Now, the word about the conditions necessary 
for healing. Of course, there are always con- 
ditions. That’s a bit of the common sense of 
life. Whether it’s having a check honoured at 
the teller’s window, or having the right to run 
an automobile, 

Or, motoring through thick traffic in the city, 
or cooking a good meal, or playing golf, or 
keeping in good bodily shape, or polite social 
intercourse, or what not in the common run of 
life, there are always conditions. 

And here the conditions are so simple as to 
be almost laughable. And yet they are so in- 
flexibly rigid as to be absolutely indispensable, 
like almost all conditions of life. 

Listen: come to Christ the Saviour, who died 
for our sins, as none other did, nor could, nor 
ean. Ask for, and accept, forgiveness of your 
sins, and the cleansing from sin through His 
blood. Thank Him for dying for you and tak- 
ing your sin away. 

Then, when the need comes, go at once to 
Him. Whatever the need may be, cleansing 
from some sin you’ve let in, power to break 
that evil habit, guidance in some difficult situa- 
tion, or bodily healing of whatever sort, to what- 
ever extent, go to Him. Go first to Him. Go 
to Him at once. 

He will forgive all our iniquities. He will 
heal all our diseases. He will prolong our days 
till the full span of life is run out. He will put 
His direct helpful touch on the outer circum- 


70 About the Healing Christ 


stances, for our sake. He will renew the vigour 
of body and mind and spirit clear up to the 
measure it should be. This is His will for you 
and me. 

Now, it would be quite enough to stop right 
there. That tells the whole story of the condi- 
tions to be met. 

But, because things are quite a bit foggy, it 
will be good to talk a bit about just what this 
means in actual habit, in the common run of 
things, in daily life. 

We haven’t been taught about healing. In- 
deed we haven’t been taught much at all about 
the Christian life. There are always fine ex- 
ceptions. 

We need to be taught. Then there will be an 
intelligent understanding. There will come to 
be a matured mellowed mental judgment. There 
will be a seasoned wisdom to know how to act in 
emergencies. There will be a habit of action 
formed. 

We will know how to meet opposition. We'll 
understand about ‘‘the fiery darts.’’ For our 
enemy is cunning and practised. He’s an old 
hand in the fine art of befooling, and filling the 
air with foggy questions and doubts. 

An old seasoned soldier holds steady under 
fire when the new recruit takes to his heels. 
The experienced banker or broker keeps his head 
when panic threatens where the less-seasoned 
takes fright and maybe loses out. 

So there’s a bit more to say. It’s detail. It’s 


*Psalm 103: I-5. 


How Does Christ Heal? 71 


included in what has been said. It will really 
grow up out of that zf one follows fully and 
truly and simply. It can be put into four words, 
an act, a purpose, a habit, an attitude. 

The act is the surrender to Christ as a master, 
not a Saviour simply but a master. In a 
thoughtful intelligent seasoned way Christ is to 
be allowed to sway all the habits, as the flame 
sways the dry kindling in the grate with a good 
draft. 

The personal habits, the home relationships 
and contacts, the daily work, or business or pro- 
fession, the income and out-go, the recreations 
and social contacts,—all these, in a wholesome 
sane habitual way, are to be as you believe He 
would prefer. 

For He always has a preference, very decided. 
And when in doubt hold the thing in question 
open till the doubt quite clears. 

The surrender is an act, a glad act. Then it 
becomes a practice, a constant unwavering prac- 
tice. And then it becomes a habit, a fixed un- 
conscious habit of action. 

It simply means fullest touch of habit and 
motive and life with Him who died for us, out 
of the love of His heart, when He didn’t have 
to. This is the meaning of being in touch with 
Christ. 

The purpose is this: in everything to please 
Him. The purpose really becomes a passion, a 
tender, strong, tense passion, a passion of love, 
a passion for Him. 

It does not simply ask ‘‘is this wrong?’’ and 


72 About the Healing Christ 


leave it out. ‘‘Is this right?’’ and put it in. 
But this: ‘‘What would He prefer? What 
would please Him ?’’ 

There are many things that aren’t wrong. 
You can prove that so far as logic goes. Though, 
of course, logic can be used to prove anything. 
And of course again, logic itself proves nothing. 

A thing may be proven not wrong. But if 
that quiet inner Voice tells you it is not best, 
not what He would prefer, then that is quite 
conclusive here for the man really im touch. 

Christ’s preference, Christ Himself, the Man 
who loved so, and loves, and cares what we do, 
this quite settles things for the man in touch. 

The habit is this: a bit of daily time off alone 
with the Book every day. The day may be 
crowded, but the man in touch finds that bit of 
time planned for, and growing longer of itself 
rather than shorter. What one really wants is 
always included, however crowded the day and 
the way. 

It’ll be time when the mind is fresh, or the 
nearest it comes to being fresh, whatever time 
that may be. It will be unhurried time, the 
spirit unhurried, even though the watch lies 
open before you. 

It will be time with the Book itself. And if 
one has a paragraphed Bible (such as the re- 
visions), with good clear type, a copy pleasant 
to handle, and if he isn’t afraid to make notes 
on the margin so things will stand out, so much 
the better. 

In that bit of time each day, multiplied by 


How Does Christ Heal? 73 


as many days as the calendar provides, the vision 
clears, the understanding is taught, the purpose 
stiffens, the judgment seasons and acquires 
poise (that rarest thing!), the spirit gentles, 
the heart becomes purer and hotter (the normal 
heart condition), the brain cooler, the feet 
steadier, the up-reaching hand bolder, and the 
out-reaching hand warmer, This is what keep- 
ing in touch means. 

The continual attitude of mind and spirit 
“comes instinctively under the sway of all this. 
One goes the simple daily round with an un- 
spoken prayer and an inner song. 

There’s the doing of the endless commonplace 
things with a new spirit. They’re done for Him, 
as He did them in that Nazareth home and ear- 
penter shop. The commonest things are done 
well because done under His eye. 

There may be monotony in act, but never in 
spirit. What would be drudgery becomes 
rhythm, because of the inner spirit. The ever- 
present One within, the song in your heart even 
when clouds gather, these sweeten the hum- 
drum task. | 

And when the unexpected comes, when the 
emergency suddenly looms, this quiet, steady at- 
titude of spirit finds you ready. You are pre- 
pared. You hear the clear, quiet inner voice. 
You know instinctively what to do. And you 
hold still and steady till you do know. This is 
what keeping in touch means. 

The whole thing is just that, being in touch 
with Christ, and keeping in touch. This is the 


74 About the Healing Christ 


simple underlying condition for healing. This 
being in touch is the natural human thing. 
Anything else is not human. It’s an intrusion. 
Things are out of plumb. 

This simple natural touch with Christ means 
health, a normal bodily functioning all the time. 
It means protection from that which threatens 
your health. It means the direct healing touch, 
if and when, disease actually gets in. 

This is the first ‘‘how’’ of Christ’s healing, 
the how of conditions, getting and keeping in 
touch. Sin broke and breaks the touch with 
Christ. We were started in touch back in 
Eden. We are born into this world in touch, at 
least, creatively. And that’s no small thing. 

The whole fabric of modern life, as it actually 
is, tends to the breaking of that touch. The 
wilful doing what we want to when we instine- 
tively know we should do something else, this 
starts or strengthens the break. 

Loss of touch means loss of strength, yes, 
bodily strength. And disease and sickness and 
weakness in general, in some way, come through 
that break. 

Coming to Christ, coming all the way, and 
staying, this mends up the break. He mends it 
up. Then the way is open for all one needs of 
whatever sort. 

And, when, some day He comes back again, 
there will be the fulness of touch in His im- 
mediate presence. Then the last lingering 
vestige of sin’s break in our bodies will be gone. 

The body laid away in the dust, in a believ- 


How Does Christ Heal? 75 


ing hope, will know the fulness of life again, as 
will ours who are still living in that day. 


The ‘‘How’’ of Method. 


Then, there’s the second ‘‘how’’ of healing, 
the how of method. What about the use of 
means? No question is more often asked in this 
connection. And there is the utmost confusion 
about the right answer. 

When Christ was here there was no science 
‘of healing. There always has been a natural 
healing practised by men. The Jews have been 
noted for their skill in the use of herbs and 
other simples, and in nursing. Luke was in all 
probability such a physician. 

To-day there is far more knowledge of the 
human body, and of the effects upon it of cer- 
tain substances found in the vegetable world. 
There has grown up through years a fund of 
experience and of wisdom and skill in this re- 
gard. Properly used it is invaluable in discern- 
ing just what the ailment is, and what is wisest 
to do. 

In spite of malpractice, wrong and faulty 
diagnosis, guesswork and experimentation, the 
unwise use of drugs, the commercialism, and the 
rapid putting of people through a wholesaling 
process in medical practice, and a not-good pro- 
fessionalism, in spite of these there is a human 
science of healing. 

It is most striking that outstanding men in 
that science to-day put greatest emphasis on the 
non-use of drugs, on the sort and preparation 


a 


76 About the Healing Christ 


and quantity of food, on the general habit of 
life, and on the mental attitude. 

Above all else skill in accurate diagnosis, the 
actual discernment of just what the trouble is, 
is distinctly rare. It is rare in its common 
scarcity. And it is rarer yet in its value, its 
influence on needed action for relief. 

There has grown up in recent years a new 
group of physicians, known by various names, 
who stress natural methods, the disuse of drugs, 
correcting wrong adjustments in the body by 
skilful manipulation, proper use of proper food, 
and like measures. 

Without doubt, the Christian physician, stu- 
dious and conscientious, dispassionately abreast 
of the latest real learning in his science, in real 
touch habitually with Christ, and under the sway 
of the Holy Spirit, free from the pride of mere 
professionalism, 

Concerned only and above all in having his 
patient get well, with a simple faith in the pres- 
ent power of a living Christ, such a physician 
would be aided by the Holy Spirit in discover- 
ing the real ailment, and used in ministering to 
relief and healing. 

But you say quickly, ‘‘Where is such a phys- 
ician?’’ and I say, quite confidently, there have 
been such physicians, and there are. Though 
one regrets their scarcity, and prays most fer- 
vently that their number might be increased. 
For, be it keenly marked, this would be strictly 
in line with God’s way of doing things. Their 
very absence or scarcity simply makes greater 


How Does Christ Heal? Te, 


the need of going direct to the great Physi- 
clan. 

Here is a quotation from the lips of a phy- 
sician, than whom it is said none stands higher 
in the profession in these two English-speaking 
nations. The quotation is a recent one, and is 
taken from a standard religious journal. 

This famous physician said, ‘‘I believe that 
prayer does cure disease. Healing comes to 
some individuals directly through prayer, I am 
-sure. I use it in my practise and rely on it to- 
day more often than on medicine. I believe that 
prayer is the contributing factor in the victory 
over disease. 

**If I had no material means at hand I should 
use prayer alone, with confidence that it would 
work the cure, if recovery were in conformity 
with God’s will. And when prayer has thus 
been made a factor in recovery I believe it is 
through direct action on the part of God.”’ 


The Seven Ways Healing May Come. 


It will help much to remember here that there 
are seven different ways in which healing may 
come to the diseased body, four natural, two 
supernatural, one a blend. 

There is a natural healing without human co- 
operation. The Creator has graciously put a 
healing power in the human body. If you cut 
your finger instantly nature goes to work. The 
blood begins to coagulate and staunch the flow. 
That power within begins to make new tissue, 


78 About the Healing Christ 


to bring the two edges of the wound together, 
and to heal it up completely. 

This has been true, of course, since Eden days, 
through the centuries, and everywhere, in sav- 
age jungles and krall, and in cultured city 
centre. 

There is this same natural healing assisted by 
human codperation. A right mental attitude ex- 
erts enormous influence. 

The term ‘‘ subjective mind ’’ is used for cer- 
tain mental faculties and processes. The term 
‘‘ objective mind ’’ is used for other mental 
faculties and processes or functions. Maybe 
some day the thing can be put into simpler words 
for us common folk to grasp more clearly. 
Mental science has not yet been fully charted. 

Without doubt, the subjective mind, or the 
subjective functions of the mind, do control the 
sensations and functions of the body. The im- 
agination plays an incaleulable part here. 

Again, without question, the objective mind or 
processes control the subjective mind as abso- 
lutely as the subjective mind controls the body. 
The body is the slave of the subjective mind in 
its instant, full, I had almost said, abject obedi- 
ence to it. The subjective mind is the slave of 
the objective mind as absolutely. 

Our knowledge, and reasoning, and deciding, 
and the insistent set-of-mind affect the imagina- 
tion enormously. And this in turn actually 
controls in large measure bodily conditions. 

Incidentally, just now, here is the process of 
faith, a simple faith in Christ, inbreathed by 


How Does Christ Heal? 79 


His Holy Spirit, through His Word or more 
directly, as all faith is. 

The objective mind lays hold of Christ’s 
promise, and accepts unquestioningly the 
result as already quite assured. The subjec- 
tive mind in obedience to that at once goes 
to work to produce the needed changes in the 
body. 

Then, quite in addition to this, as the need 
may be, there is a supernatural touch of Christ’s 
‘own direct power coming in, and working di- 
rectly upon the body, and also working through 
this purely natural process. 

The thing to mark just now is that the whole 
mental attitude, both conscious and unconscious, 
affects enormously the free working of that natu- 
ral healing correcting power within every man’s 
body. The processes of grace are as fascinating 
as a romance. 

Then there is this natural healing power as- 
sisted by expert knowledge and practised skill. 
Here is where the true physician comes in. And 
the most a physician ever can do is to assist 
this natural healing power. 

The wise physician recognizes this, and freely 
acknowledges it. He is merely nature’s as- 
sistant. His best work is in finding out, what 
that natural power already knows, just what 
the trouble really is. 

Then he can be of real assistance, and only 
then. Otherwise he is only a poor bungler hin- 
dering. And if he be sufficiently wise, and hum- 
ble enough, and maybe sometimes unprofessional 


“ 


80 About the Healing Christ 


enough, merely to be an assistant, so far all is 
well. 

And when healing comes what the assistant 
has done is distinctly the smaller part. That 
natural healing power has done the big thing, 
under a wondrous unseen personal Physician 
directly directing and aiding. 

My eye was quickly caught with the legend 
eut deep into the gray stone over a large hos- 
pital building near one of our largest Eastern 
cities. It said ‘‘Man tends; God mends.”’ 

The truth got out that time. The big thing 
is done by God, that is, as is commonly said, by 
nature. Man’s highest place is as an attendant. 
And surely it would be scientific and wise and 
good common sense for the attendant physician 
to be in closest sympathetic touch with his Chief- 
of-staff. 

What a tragic thing for the poor patient when 
he isn’t. This is the third way in which healing 
may come, the natural healing power within the 
body assisted by human skill. 

Then there is a fourth way. The natural 
healing, in spite of, and overcoming unwise 
bungling and lack of skill. The human touch 
in this case puts a greater burden on the natu- 
ral healing. 

And oftentimes the burden proves too much. 
The human touch is an interference. Nature is 
outdone. And the poor patient limps slowly 
along, or his life slips its tether. 

There are two supernatural ways in which 
healing comes. There is the direct supernatural 


How Does Christ Heal? 81 


touch of Christ, distinctly in addition to any- 
thing that nature or human skill or both can do. 
And this is the one thing which this series of 
Talks is mainly concerned with. 

And there is a second supernatural healing, 
the Devil’s. A strange thing this! That comes 
in for separate treatment in a later Talk. 

And then, of course, there may be a blend of 
two or more of these. Four natural, two super- 
natural, and a blend of these two. 


‘The Use of Means. 


But, now, we come direct to the question: 
what about the use of means? And the answer 
is simple. And it is an answer that answers. 
There need be no evasion here, smothered up in 
foggy rhetoric. 

The answer is this: ask Christ. Get in touch, 
if not already so. And then when the need 
comes ask Him. He will tell you. And if you 
are in touch, and you will listen quietly, you’ll 
hear His answer, clear and simple and positive. 

The dominant law of the Christian life, do 
you know what it is? This: obedience to the 
Holy Spirit’s leading. This takes the first place, 
always. When there is any conflict this law 
displaces all others. 

Perhaps you ask, but how shall one know just 
what His leading is? And that question has al- 
ready been answered in that bit on keeping in 
touch. Four things were named for keeping in 
touch with Christ, act, purpose, habit, attitude. 

That’s the answer here. In that habitual 


82 About the Healing Christ 


touch we will know clearly just what the Holy 
Spirit would have us do. And as we do what 
He tells us things will clear up for us yet more. 

Christ heals through means and the skilled 
human expert, sometimes. He heals without 
these, sometimes. He heals when the physician 
frankly confesses his inability to cure. And 
sometimes He heals by overcoming and counter- 
acting the physician and the means used. 

Ask Him. He’s there by your side, inside. 
He’s intensely interested. He’s eager to tell you 
what to do. In this He is a true physician, for 
He advises. 

And, if it may be through means, remember 
it is His touch through the needed means that 
is effective. And His own personal direct touch 
is more, much more, than the means or the ex- 
pert human counsel that He may know your 
body stands in need of. 

The wise physician is an expert in the body, 
its functions and its needs. Your body may be 
needing something it isn’t getting, may be need- 
ing it very badly. 

Modern cookery, with some exceptions, is 
washing out of the food chemical salts and other 
nourishment that our bodies need for health and 
strength. 

Modern commercialism, for just one instance 
now, is milling out of the wheat much, indeed 
most, of what the Creator put in to meet our 
bodily needs. 

No nations are better fed than these two Eng- 
lish-speaking nations. Yet, as a matter of mere 


How Does Christ Heal? 83 


sober fact, with loaded tables, our bodies are 
being hurt, crippled, starved, for lack of needed 
nourishment. 

The Creator has put into the foods what our 
bodies need. We wash it out, or mill it out, or 
otherwise put or leave it out. 

The physician may find our bodies ailing 
sorely for lack of some element the food we eat 
should give, but doesn’t. It does not matter 
- what you eall it, if it actually supplies what is 
lacking. 

It is clearly the particular kind of nourish- 
ment the body needs and isn’t getting. The 
physician-expert, if he be wise enough, may help 
us live more in accord with the laws of our bodies 
commonly called the laws of health. 

A simple striking incident is told of Leo 
Thirteenth. He was elected pope in his later 
sixties. He was very frail in health. It is said 
that he was finally elected after a long contest 
because it was thought he could not live long. 

And then other plans could mature, and other 
ambitions among his electors could be achieved. 
So it was said. He outlived the entire College 
of Cardinals that elected him, finally dying in 
his ninety-fourth year, and remarkable for his 
intellectual vigour and his masterful grip on his 
policies to the end. 

And he himself explained the human side of 
such a long life in spite of his extreme physical 
disabilities. He said he was not an expert in 
the knowledge of his body. He had a physician 
to advise him about the care of his body. 


84 About the Healing Christ 


He followed faithfully the regimen of food, 
exercise, sleep and so on prescribed for him. 
Clearly he must have had a really wise skilled 
physician. And he attributed to this his remark- 
able mental vigour clear to the end of his un- 
usually long life. 

We may be disobeying flagrantly some law of 
our bodies. Obedience is the universal law of 
all life. There can’t be health and vigour of 
body without intelligent obedience to its laws. 

We are all fairly ignorant, for intelligent peo- 
ple really remarkably ignorant, in this regard. 
In the bodily emergency that has arisen there 
may be need of expert advice and guidance. 

One at once remembers that this thoughtful 
intelligent obedience to the laws of the body is 
strictly in accord with God’s general line of 
action. He loves nature’s roads. He made them. 
They are sufficient for all common use. 

We are supposed to use our thinking ap- 
paratus. Really, regeneration means a new 
mental birth as well as a new spirit birth. 

But that’s another story. Yet, be it keenly 
noted, in the emergency the supernatural swings 
into action. And life is full of emergencies. 

I recall a friend in one of our leading Eastern 
cities. She was suffering severely at the time 
from some bodily ailment. She prayed repeat- 
edly for healing, but it didn’t come. And she 
wondered why. She was not conscious of any 
hindrance in her spirit life. 

She had experienced healing by divine touch 
in answer to prayer more than once. She was 


How Does Christ Heal? 85 


in fellowship with a group of earnest saintly 
people who taught that the use of physician and 
means showed a lack of faith in Christ. 

Puzzled, she went again to her knees in spe- 
cial prayer. As plain as could be the impres- 
sion came, as distinct as a voice, to consult a 
certain physician. He was a Christian, who had 
formerly served in her family. And my im- 
pression is that he was sympathetic with the 
_ teaching of healing by Christ’s direct touch. 

There was a hesitancy about consulting a 
physician because of the teaching of the group 
of Christians with whom she was in fellowship. 
But that impression persisted, and was quite 
clear. She knew it was an answer, thus far, to 
her prayer. 

She consulted the physician and in response to 
his questions told her story. He asked her what 
she ate. She said she could eat nothing but dry 
toast and tea. He told her these were poison to 
her body in its present condition. 

He gave her no medicine, simply directions 
about food, and about the care of her body. 
She followed his expert advice, continued pray- 
ing, and she quickly was quite well again. 

Clearly enough she needed advice to help her 
obey intelligently the law of her body. Through 
the advice, and the obedience, and Christ’s touch, 
the healing came. Ask Him. He’ll tell you. 

If one can imagine the supernatural healing 
touch given unwisely it is clear that it would 
confirm us in our ignorant or wilful disobedi- 
ence to the law of our bodies. 


be} 


86 About the Healing Christ 


Then another crisis comes, and another heal- 
ing, and so on. Could anything be more ab- 
normal? What a childish level of action! In- 
stead Christ would lead us up to the level of 
intelligent mature action. 

A friend, who bears an honoured name in 
earnest Christian circles, in one of our promi- 
nent cities, told me this simple bit out of her 
experience. 

Her daughter, when a little baby, was suffer- 
ing much from an earache, and erying piteously. 
The simple things she did for the child brought 
no relief. 

Distressed in heart over her child’s acute suf- 
fering she sent up a silent, earnest prayer for 
help. And she said to me, in her quiet, thought- 
ful way, that as clear as could be an inner 
voice said, ‘‘Put her feet in hot water.’’ 

The child’s feet were hardly in the hot water 
when the erying ceased, a look of relief came 
into the dear little face, and the needed sleep 
had already come before the feet were dried. 

The hot water drew the excess of blood away 
from the ear. Is it not a winsome bit in its 
sheer homeliness out of the Book of Life? How 
homely, in His sane, practical touch, is the 
blessed Holy Spirit. 

Ask Christ. He’ll be glad to tell you. But 
you must be careful to obey, simply, intelli- 
gently, fully. Failure to obey dulls the ears. 
You won’t be so keen to hear next time He 
speaks. 

I recall one time my back hurt me very much. 


How Does Christ Heal? 87 


The ache seemed always there. I knew I had 
been a sinner in the matter of overwork. But 
I had repented, and was trying to put my peni- 
tence into shoes. Still the nagging pain per- 
sisted. 

I prayed for the healing touch. As clear as 
a bell, as quiet as the falling dew, the words 
were spoken into my inner ear, ‘‘Straighten 
up.”’ 

Years of travel, and of reading and writing - 
on trains, had led to the habit of stooping. It 
was abnormal. My back was protesting. The 
vital organs within were being crowded. Pain 
is always a danger-signal, graciously warning us. 
At once I began straightening up, and I have 
been straightening up ever since. The pain 
quickly left. 

The Holy Spirit is so practical. He’s a real 
Friend. He wants to help. He helpeth our 
infirmities, of all sorts. Ask Christ. He’ll tell 
you. And you’ll hear if your ear is open, and 
your inner spirit quiet enough. 

Do you remember the homely bit in the story 
of the healing of Hezekiah?* In answer to his 
pleading prayer Isaiah is sent with a message. 

And this is part of what he said, ‘‘Take a 
eake of figs, and lay it for a plaster on the boil, 
and he will recover.’’ 

Then there was the supernatural shift back- 
ward of the shadow on the sun dial as an in- 
dication that God was actually at work on his 
behalf. What an exquisite blend of the homely 


*2 Kings 20:1-18. Isaiah 38: 1-8, 21. 


88 About the Healing Christ 


and the divine, the natural and the super- 
natural! | 

There was something Hezekiah’s body needed 
that human hands could do. There was some- 
thing else needed in his body that only God’s 
touch could reach. The poultice did what it 
eould. God’s touch did what no poultice could 
have done. Both are used. 

God loves nature’s roads. But He unhesi- 
tatingly gives the more-than-natural touch when 
need be. Ask Him. He’ll tell you. Then be 
sure you give Him the praise, as Hezekiah failed 
to do when his royal guest came from a far 
country. 

One can understand that God moved the King 
of Babylon to come when he heard of Hezekiah’s 
remarkable healing. Hezekiah failed God, and 
failed his visitor, too. 


Sanity and Saintliness. 


There’s a fellowship of saintly Christian peo- 
ple who, among other blessed truths, teach heal- 
ing by Christ’s direct touch. Their testimony 
and activity have been graciously owned and 
used by God throughout the homeland and the 
foreign-mission world. 

They insist that no means be used. It is a 
common word among them that to consult a 
physician and to use means reveal a lack of 
faith. 

One is reluctant to say a word that even seems 
critical of such a saintly consecrated folk. Yet, 


How Does Christ Heal? 89 


clearly such condemnation of means is not ac- 
cording to the teaching of Scripture, nor the 
Holy Spirit’s leading, nor God’s general dealing 
with men, nor according to good sanctified com- 
mon sense. The Holy Spirit’s leading is the one 
touchstone of what to do. 

It is striking that the most prominent false 
system of healing to-day, distinctly non-Chris- 
tian, though using Christian phraseology, makes 
this same insistence on not using any material 
help of any sort. It is the one point of contact 
between two groups diametrically opposed at 
every other point. 

One needs to avoid extremes. The sanity of 
the Holy Spirit awes. If one may say it with 
utmost reverence, the Holy Spirit is always so 
sane. There is no one so sane as the man ac- 
tually under the control of the Holy Spirit. 
It’s a touchstone. Saintliness and sanity natu- 
rally go together. 

Faith Street is on the top of a hill. There are 
two roads slanting down on opposite sides, down 
to the lowlands and swamps. 

On one side is Doubt Street. The slant down 
is scarcely noticeable at the first. It is so slight. 
And there are unseen traffic men always trying, 
by this means or that, to start you off that way, 
if ever so little at first. 

On the opposite side of the hill is Queer Street. 
Its slant downward is almost none at all at the 
first. Still it’s there. 

Queer Street has a large number of one-room 
bungalows. So many personally lovely saintly 


90 About the Healing Christ 


people associate, all alone, each with himself, 
down. there. 

The only proper place to live is up on the top 
of the hill on Faith Street. The air is bracing 
there. Fogs and clouds are blown away. 

Indeed some object that the air is too sharp. 
It’s a searching air, they say. And then, they 
say, it’s such a steep slant up to the top. It 
pulls your strength so, and takes your breath 
getting up. 

But those who live there habitually talk much 
of the bracing quality of the atmosphere. The 
view is very clear, and far, and unobstructed. 
And there’s a wondrous wind-harp on the top, 
whose soft rhythmic chordings refresh and 
strengthen. 

Let us each one hire a moving van, if need be, 
and move up the steep slope to the top of the 
hill, and settle down up on Faith Street, and 
refuse to be budged down either way by the in- 
sistent traffic man. 

It is interesting to notice that it is entirely 
possible to be both sane and saintly. No one is 
so sane as one actually swayed by the Holy 
Spirit in his mental processes, as well as in the 
habit of his life. 

Keeping in touch with Christ through the 
Book, and the knees, and the habitual recog- 
nition of His presence, and keeping in touch 
with other humans, this keeps one wholesomely 
sane. It seasons both spirit and mental judg- 
ment. 

Then, when any need arises, the first thing is 


How Does Christ Heal? 91 


to ask Him, Christ, for the healing touch, and 
to ask Him what to do, if anything. 

He guides us in the use of our common sense. 
The man surrendered in heart and will the Holy 
Spirit guides in thinking things through, and in 
knowing what to do.’ 

It ought to be the blessed commonplace that 
all bodily ailments, slight or serious, be prayed 
over the first thing. 

I remember a gentle-faced young mother in 
the West, with two or three young children. 
She quietly said that as ailments arose with any 
of the children she always prayed with them, 
simply, briefly. And she knew, she said, what a 
practical difference it made. 

If it’s a serious case, perhaps a chronic case 
already in hand, the thing is to have a bit of 
quiet time alone with Christ over His book. 
Have a bit of getting in touch afresh. 

Ask Christ. Wait quietly for His answer. 
Cultivate the quiet inner spirit. Ask expec- 
tantly, remembering that it is His first will to 
heal. He is willing to heal, and more is eager to 
heal. Reach out your hand and take all His 
Pierced Hand is reaching down to give. 

A friend told me of having some trouble which 
seemed quite serious. She went to consult a 
physician in whom she had confidence, in a near- 
by city. 

After a thorough examination he was quite 
sure she had cancer in her breast, and strongly 
advised an operation. There was then in ses- 


*Psalm 25:9. 


92 About the Healing Christ 


sion in the city a gathering of physicians and 
surgeons. A certain eminent surgeon was in 
attendance. Arrangements could be made for 
the operation by this specialist. 

But there was a restraint within, my friend 
said, a restraint in her inner spirit, quite dis- 
tinct. She did not agree. The physician depre- 
cated delay, and plainly said it would be foolish 
not to do as he suggested, and at onee. It was 
a peculiarly fortunate opportunity to have this 
visiting surgeon so immediately available, he 
said. 

But the woman had prayed much before the 
consultation. The inner impression was clear. 
She returned home. And she prayed now with 
a clear knowledge of her serious need. 

She asked definitely for Christ’s healing 
touch. And she quietly told me that the lumps, 
and the sense of distress, gradually and com- 
pletely left. This had been some years before. 
There had been no return of the trouble. 

It was particularly interesting that she had no 
special contact at that time with those who 
taught healing. Many years before there had 
been such contact. As the trouble developed she 
remembered what she had heard long before. 

And now without any special prayer with 
others, or conference, she simply pled the prom- 
ise of the Book and asked for the healing, and it 
eame. She is a thoughtful, quiet, earnest Chris- 
tian woman, now past the prime of years, with 
no marked gift of leadership. 

Another friend had the beginning of what 


How Does Christ Heal? 93 


looked like cancer on her lower brow, plainly 
marked. The physician advised an operation, 
and feared that without it one eye would al- 
most certainly be involved, and probably its 
sight lost. But she obeyed the inner restraint, 
not to have the operation. 

My wife and I prayed with her, and later, 
at her request, I anointed her with oil, and again 
we prayed. The cancer never developed beyond 
the first stage noticed, and after the anointing it 
gradually and completely left. There is now 
no mark to be seen. 

Recently a man whose home is in Texas told 
me of an experience of healing in his family. 
His six-year-old daughter had had a fever. It 
came up to the critical stage. The temperature 
was marked. The physician plainly revealed his 
anxiety, and feared that her strength would not 
be sufficient. It was doubted that she might 
survive the night. It was a time of sorest dis- 
tress. 

They were all worn out with the watching and 
nursing, day and night, and the concern of 
spirit. The child’s weakness was such that the 
usual evening family prayers were held in the 
hallway with the child’s room-door open. 

At the child’s own request a special prayer 
was made that Christ would heal her by His 
own direct touch. And the family were greatly 
touched and impressed with her simple, strong 
faith. 

She said to her father in effect, ‘‘I’m going 
to be well now. Christ will heal me.’’ She fell 


94 About the Healing Christ 


asleep with the words on her lips, and a smile 
on her wasted face. When the father and 
mother retired from the sick room one said to 
the other, ‘‘ But suppose she isn’t better in the 
morning; it’ll be such a disappointment to her. 
What’ll we do then?’’ 

And the other replied, ‘* But that isn’t faith. 
Faith believes it will be as we asked.’’ In the 
morning the child awoke with her temperature 
quite normal, and speedily recovered her 
strength. 

Let us live in simple, full touch of life with 
our living Christ. And when any need may 
come go to Him. It is His eager will to advise 
with us, and above all to heal us, to His glory. 

For those we touch will know what a Christ 
Christ is. It will let them see His glory, that 
is, see the sort of a Saviour He is, 


V 


HOW FAR MAY CHRIST’S HEALING BE 
EXPECTED? CHRIST’S GIVING 
AND MAN’S TAKING 


Tt is Christ’s will that we be pure in heart, 
intelligent in understanding, well balanced in 
judgment, in the grip of a noble purpose, 
flamed by a strong passion, strong and well in 
body, and in that touch of heart and under- 
standing with Himself where we can reach out 
and take all His Pierced Hand is now reaching 
down to give. 


Healed but Limping. 


How far may Christ’s power be expected to 
meet our bodily needs? We commonly say that 
there is no limit to His power to meet our spir- 
itual needs. Is there a limit in our bodily needs? 

There is, of course, no limit to Christ’s power. 
It seems to be a matter of His willingness, what 
He thinks it is best or wisest to do for us in this 
regard. 

There’s such a wide range of bodily ailments. 
It runs from a nervous headache to organic 
heart trouble. It may be a crick in your back or 
a chronic lameness, or anywhere in between. 

Troubles that come from disturbed nervous 
conditions are more quickly affected by a 
changed mental attitude. Functional troubles 

95 


96 About the Healing Christ 


are reckoned more susceptible to treatment than 
organic. Indeed organic troubles are usually 
quite ruled out. 

A nervous condition may bring on a serious 
palpitation of your heart. The right touch on 
the nerves would make the heart’s beating all 
right again. 

Some troubles are commonly classed as dis- 
tinctly outside the range of healing, whether 
some system of mental suggestion, or Christ’s 
own supernatural touch of power. 

I recall running across a certain man in a 
Western city. He was well known in Christian 
circles as a leader in city mission work in New 
York City. 

He had made the journey west to get in touch 
with a Christian teacher of healing. And he 
told me that he had been healed of a rather 
serious trouble. 

But he had been lame for many years. And 
as we parted he limped away. I looked after 
him. He was praising Christ for the healing 
of his body. 

But it had never occurred to him that this 
serious chronic lameness might have been healed 
too, nor apparently to the man who prayed with 
him. Was he right? Is there a limit in this 
regard? 

There is nothing commoner than the use of 
eye-glasses to help defective or weak eyes. It 
is common among many who teach healing, the 
mental sort alone, and the Christ supernatural — 
sort of healing. 


How Far May Healing Be Expected 97 


One listens to eager, joyous voices praising 
God for the healing touch that has come, perhaps 
to some remarkably radical extent. 

But the eye-glasses are there. It seems a bit 
puzzling. Is there a limit to the power we may 
expect ? 

There can be no question that the eyes are 
vitally connected with one’s health and vigour. 
Eye-strain has been responsible for serious 
nervous troubles, and for many a nervous break- 
down. It’s an intensely practical question so 
far as health is concerned. 

The eyes are affected much by nervous condi- 
tions. The use of glasses adapted to certain in- 
accuracies in the eyes, of course, tends to con- 
firm and harden those inaccuracies. 

It is being insisted upon in certain eye-spe- 
cialist cireles that a proper nervous relaxation 
will actually correct practically all eye inaccu- 
racies. And this new teaching is having a wide 
acceptance and application abroad, as well as 
here. 

Our next Talk lays much emphasis on a right 
mental attitude. A simple childlike trust in © 
Christ affects one’s habitual mental attitude. 

And this in turn has an influence on all bodily 
conditions quite beyond what we can take in. 

Sometimes aged persons will have what is 
spoken of as ‘‘second sight.’?’ I do not mean 
now the psychical sense of seeing into the fu- 
ture, and that sort of thing, which is spoken of 
in this same way. 

But there is a physical ‘‘second sight’’ re- 


98 About the Healing Christ 


ferred to. It is not uncommon to find one in 
the seventies or later who has laid aside eye- 
glasses entirely, and is able to see and to read 
easily without their aid. 

Is it possible that this is simply such a re- 
laxation of the nerves as normalizes the eyes 
again ? 

Is it possible that the habitual spirit of un- 
questioning faith in Christ, and so the habitual 
right attitude of mind, would so affect our 
bodies, and our nerves as to include our eyes? 

Beyond this, may we pray expectantly for the 
healing touch on our eyes? The relation of the 
question to one’s health is clear enough. It is a 
matter of health, vitally. What should we ex- 
pect? How much? 

One’s teeth have a still closer relation to 
health. The remarks about Christians undoubt- 
edly experiencing healing, and yet having faulty 
eyes, could be repeated about the teeth, as ex- 
tensively, maybe more. 

Modern dentistry certainly is having a large 
field of activity, and ever increasing. That it 
has gone through many experimental stages, and 
isn’t out of them yet, is of course a common- 
place. 

And the experimenting is always at human 
expense of suffering and ill health. Many of 
the things said about the medical profession, as 
regards commercialism, the rapid wholesaling 
process, the blundering personal equation, and 
the like, could be repeated here. 

Without question dentistry is a science and 


How Far May Healing Be Expected 99 


art combined, mechanical art and artistic art. 
And without doubt untold numbers have been 
distinctly helped. 

Of course, food affects the teeth very much, 
the sort of food. This is particularly true of 
growing children, and of expectant mothers and 
nursing mothers. 

The commercialism and the ues that takes 
out of the food certain substances needed to 
- build up bones and teeth, make for deficient and 
defective teeth. So does the unbalanced diet. 

Such teeth easily break down and give out in 
the grind of daily use. Of course, obedience to 
nature’s laws here means the proper cleansing 
and care of the teeth from childhood up. 

Even with the best that the most skilled con- 
scientious dentist can do, substitute teeth are so 
much less than the natural that no comparison 
can be made. 

The two things are too far apart for com- 
parison. Loss of natural teeth lessens health 
and vigour and length of life, regardless of the 
dentist’s utmost skill. 

Does dentistry simply give a maimed man a 
pair of crutches so he ean hobble along some- 
how, instead of not at all? 

Is it simply good for those who don’t and 
won’t come to Christ for what He has to give? 
Or is there more? How much may we properly, 
sanely expect, and not be disappointed? 


The Need the Measure of Power. 
It becomes of intense interest to turn back and 


100 About the Healing Christ 


note the extent of Christ’s healing in the Gospel 
days. 

The list of healings there has a few acute 
cases, but most of them are the absolutely in- 
eurable incorrigibles. A man blind from birth 
is included, with the possibility that the eye- 
balls were not fully matured or developed. 

One summary actually says that the maimed 
were made whole. There is only one meaning 
when that word ‘‘maimed’’ is used, whether the 
Greek or English word is examined. And that 
is, that a limb or arm or foot, or some other 
part, that had been lost was replaced by a new 
one. 

That would be distinctly creative power at 
work. But the meaning of the language used is 
quite beyond question. 

And then the last word in extremes is said in 
the raising of the dead, even Lazarus dead four 
days. 

And the same sort of thing is repeated in the 
Acts. The beggar man in Jerusalem at the gate 
of the temple had been lame from birth. Now 
he leaps up, and walks. There’s an abundance 
of strength, where there had been none at all. 

The Lystra man had never walked. And, even 
here, there are the two dead raised. There’s 
Doreas near the beginning of the Acts, and 
there is the Troas young man toward the end, 
when some might think of the extent of power 
as possibly waning. 

There can be no question about how far heal- 
ing was actually experienced in these early days. 


How Far May Healing Be Expected 101 


The need was the measure of the power. The 
seriousness of the case didn’t affect the power 
available. 

There were degrees of disability. But there 
were no degrees in the power at Christ’s com- 
mand, and in response to the disciples’ Spirit- 
led actions. 

The power was always abundant, not scanty. 
The power was sufficient for the worst case. 
‘But what about now? How far may healing be 
expected to-day? Up to the limit of real need? 

It seems like a very difficult question, at first 
flush, unless indeed it is answered at once by 
some with a positive negative. 

Yet, there’s an answer. And it is an answer 
that really answers. It is not a piously rhetor- 
ical evasion. 


Ask Christ. 


There are two parts to the answer. The first 
is this: ask Christ. You can come into the sim- 
ple touch with Him where you ean ask, and He 
will answer your question, and answer it fully. 

That’s an enormous advantage, to get actually 
in touch with the Christ that has all power, and 
has used it in this way. 

Recall, if you will, what was said in our last 
Talk about getting into touch with Christ. 

Ask Christ. He has the power to. That is 
clear. He did have the love to when He was 
down here. That’s clear, too. 

He thought it the wise thing to loosen out His 


102 About the Healing Christ 


power through His followers in those early sam- 
ple Church days. 

Ask Christ about your own need, whatever it 
may be. He is there at your side. He is in- 
tensely interested. He will answer your ques- 
tion. 

Each one of us is a door. We are Christ’s 
door, or we may be. We are His door into the 
whole circle where we live. 

He wants to get through us to them. His 
dealings with us are an acted-out plea to them. 
Through these He talks to them. 

The freer hand He can have with us the more 
He ean touch them through us. We should ea- 
gerly yet patiently get into the sort of touch 
where He can give all He wants to. That means 
all we need. 

Perhaps you’re in that school we are to talk 
about soon. You need to learn a thing or two, 
maybe. 

The thing we’re needing may be withheld be- 
cause there’s something we’re needing more. 
We may not know about that other need. 

It may mean a radical face-about to know 
about that other thing, and more radical yet to 
be willing to get it, with all it involves. 

Maybe you’ve got a term in school before you 
ean get all you’re needing. But then you can 
make it a very short term, if you will. 

And, and, the Devil may be hindering. There 
is no bit of teaching more bitterly hated, and 
more stubbornly fought against, than this of 
bodily healing by Christ’s supernatural touch. 


How Far May Healing Be Expected 103 


Those who are in a place of leadership, or 
who have the personal gift of leadership, are yet 
more bitterly opposed than those otherwise 
placed or gifted. 

One has to insist through bitter opposition 
often. The thing is to be clear of the Holy 
Spirit’s leading, and then insist on having all 
He has for you. 

Ask Christ your question. And remember, as 
- you ask, about His first will for us. It includes 
whatever is included in this: full bodily health 
and vigour, to His glory. That’s the first half 
of the answer. 


God’s Gwing: Our Taking. 


The second part goes a little deeper in. It is 
this: Christ’s giving is dependent on our taking. 
You can’t give into a tight shut fist. Christ 
can’t. 

There’s a striking little word on Christ’s lips 
in that Betrayal Night Talk.’ He and the inner 
group are walking under the full moon, past the 
Herod temple with its beautiful brass grape- 
vine. 

Christ says, ‘‘Ye did not choose me, but I 
chose you.’’ They did choose Him as a Saviour, 
He chose them for the bit of service they were 
to do. 

‘‘And appointed you,’’ He goes on, ‘‘that ye 
should go and bear fruit.’’ The fruit was the 
life, what they really were in themselves. All 
service roots down in the life. 


* John 15: 16. 


104 About the Healing Christ 


‘‘And that your fruit shall abide.’’ Not 
green, gnarly fruit, but full-grown, luscious, 
juicy fruit. He means us to live a life matured 
and ripened in its spiritual experiences. 

‘That whatsoever ye shall ask.’’ Note that: 
prayer, like service, grows out of the life. The 
life in touch prays, and ean pray, and can pray 
the prayer that loosens out Christ’s power to 
the full. 

‘‘Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my 
name, He may give it you.’’ The striking word 
is that word ‘‘may.”’ 

It is not shall this time, but may. Every other 
time the word used in this connection is shall; 
this time it is may. 

‘*Shall’’ means His willingness to do, His pur- 
pose. ‘‘May’’ means our codperation with Him. 
‘*Shall’’ is His side, ‘‘may’’ is ours. 

Our asking makes it possible for God to give. 
We give Him the open channel. God needs an 
open hand, and that means an open life. 

Christ’s giving is always dependent on our 
taking. And we are such beggarly takers. No 
human hand has ever yet reached up to take 
as much as Christ’s pierced hand is reaching 
down to give. 

For the taking must be on a level with the 
giving. It means that touch where we want 
what He wants. He leads us. We follow. 

We talk much about God’s sovereignty, with- 
out understanding much about just what it 
means. We don’t talk so much about man’s 
sovereignty. 


How Far May Healing Be Expected 105 


Practically, God’s sovereignty means that ul- 
timately, through the tangled-up network of hu- 
man wills, God’s love-plan for things down here 
will work fully out. Yet it will be without in- 
fringing on any man’s free choice and action. 

Man’s sovereignty, as planned by God, means 
that everything we have and get and do is 
through our own choice. 

God’s sovereignty waits on man’s sovereignty, 

.-His purposes on our glad codperation. And 
some day these two will run side by side. And 
man’s sovereignty will be deliberately merged in 
God’s. His love will win our choice. 

But, just now, the bit to emphasize is this: 
in actual life the biggest thing is man’s taking. 
We may have, out of Christ’s down-stretched 
hand, all we can take, and then all we actually 
will take, and do take. 

It’s a three-sided transaction. Christ reaches 
down to give all we need, without any limit or 
restriction. We reach up and take out of His 
hand. 

The Devil reaches over to keep us from taking 
out of Christ’s hand. He tries to keep our 
hands, Christ’s hand and mine, out of touch, if 
possible. 

He befogs the air so we don’t see straight in 
our reaching. He tries to teeter our reaching 
hands, this way and that, or to make them not 
reach up far enough so as to touch. 

He does his best to tire us, to wear us out, so 
we'll quit the reaching. When he slips here he 
starts in afresh over there. 


106 About the Healing Christ 


The Limit of Our Consent. 


There’s a remarkable bit from Paul’s pen that 
fits in here. It says that all power needed by 
any one (in touch with Christ) is already within 
himself. 

It is a matter of letting this power that is 
within actually meet the need. The need you 
feel so keenly and the power to meet that need, 
are close neighbours. You have both. It’s a 
matter of the two getting together. 

The passage is in the little letter to the Ephe- 
sian church, where Paul had that two-years’ re- 
markable healing ministry. It becomes the more 
striking because the particular thing being 
talked about in this letter is this: the power of 
God at our disposal to meet our need. 

There’s a threefold standard or measure of 
that power, the raising of Christ when He was 
dead,’ the making of a new man inside one dead 
in sin,” and the changing bitterest enemies into 
dearest friends.” Pretty high standard of power 
that could do such things! 

Paul says we may expect that power, which 
is now within us, to meet any need for us to- 
day up to that measure or limit. That covers 
what we are talking about just now, and more. 

The striking bit comes at the end of chapter 
three.“ In simple language here is what Paul 
is saying, in part. The Holy Spirit is power. 


Ephesians 1: 18-22, 
* Ephesians 2: I-10. 

® Ephesians 2: 11-22. 
‘Ephesians 3: 16-20. 


How Far May Healing Be Expected 107 


He in Himself is all the power of God. He is 
now inside each of us. He comes in through the 
opened door of our faith. He reproduces 
Christ’s own character in us, so far as we let 
Him have sway. 

The big thing He does is to fill our hearts 
with that tender, strong passion, the love of 
Christ. This comes to inelude every other 
needed trait of character. 

Then Paul sums up all in this: ‘‘Unto Him 
who is able to do exceeding abundantly above 
all we ask or think, according to the power that 
worketh in us Wd 

That is to say, He is able to do, not simply 
what we ask, but what we are thinking about 
that we wish He would do. 

Then Paul piles things up in a rare way. He 
is able to do above that, then abundantly above 
that, then exceeding abundantly above that. 
That is a tremendous climax. 

And the one outstanding characteristic of this 
power is love. It is a power of love. He can 
and He will. Love controls the power. That 
surely answers our question. 

And then the measure or the limit or the ex- 
tent, up to which we may expect this power is 
put in these words, ‘‘according to the power that 
worketh in us.’? That means up to the measure 
of that power working in us. 

Of course, the power itself is without any 
limit. But the Holy Spirit always works with 
our consent. He does only as much as we let 
Him do. Everything He does is as we are will- 





108 About the Healing Christ 


ing. So the limit of the working is the lumi 
of our consent. He’ll do all we let Him. 

As we let Him work iv us all He wants to, 
He works for us all we need. If we let Him 
work character in us (Christ’s character) He’s 
free to work bodily healing for us. 

We let Him work out His fruit in us, love, 
joy, peace, yes, long-suffering, gentleness, good- 
ness, meekness, faithfulness, self-mastery. Then 
He is free to work out for us the healing our 
bodies need, and our circumstances, too. 

Fruit-growing is a gradual thing, seed-sowing, 
pruning, sun and rain, dew and air, spraying for 
hurtful insects, then bud and blossom, the be- 
ginning of the fruit, and its gradual growth 
up to juicy, luscious, full-sized fruit. It’s a 
gradual thing. All growth is. One must be pa- 
tient and steady, very steady. But sometimes 
it is surprisingly quick when it is the fruit the 
Holy Spirit bears in the soil of our character. 


Nine Things About Taking. 


How far may we expect Christ’s healing? 
The answer is this: we may have all we can take. 
And then all we do take. 

But please notice a few simple yet radical 
things about the taking. They’ve been spoken 
of partly before in another connection. 

The taking must be in Christ’s Name, pleading 
His blood. The Devil yields only to whom he 
must. And he must to Christ. 

The taking must be by one in actual touch of 


How Far May Healing Be Expected 109 


heart with Christ. The Devil laughs at any one 
else. 

The taking must be in the utmost humility. 
Our sins cost Christ so much suffering, and this 
that we take has been bought for us with His 
blood. 

The taking must be definite. The Devil yields 
only what he must. The taking must be per- 
sistent. The Devil yields only when he must. 
‘And he’s a sly, deceitful, toughened fighter by 
strategy as well as by ugly force. 

The taking must be as the Holy Spirit guides. 
The touchstone of all prayer is the Holy Spirit’s 
guidance. He puts the prayer to be prayed into 
one’s heart. 

No mere asking for something because of 
some one else’s experience will do. That ex- 
perience may be blessed. But there must be 
one’s own direct leading, over the open Book, on 
the bent knee. 

The taking must be with the life. No mere 
church membership, and activity and giving, and 
the like, will do. 

No simple taking of the sacred bread and the 
holy cup will answer here. These may all be 
very blessed. 

But the taking must be with the very life. 
And it is so. One finds that it is only the life 
actually lived for Christ, by His grace, that can 
reach up and take to the full what His blood 
has redeemed. 

And, then, will you keenly mark, that you 
take only as much as you can take. The power 


110 About the Healing Christ 


to take varies with various persons, and even 
at various times with the same person. It 
all depends on one’s personal touch with 
Christ. 

And you take only as much as you actually do 
take. As a rule, the conception of how much 
you may take varies. It varies with circum- 
stances and with one’s mood. The Spirit’s lead- 
ing is the decisive thing. 

But, but, it is Christ’s first will that we shall 
be made strong and well in our bodies up to the 
limit of our need. 

And He is by your side now eagerly a | 
to give. Giving won’t make Him any poorer, 
only gladder. 

I have the privilege, which I prize highly, of 
the friendship of Mr. James Moore Hickson, the 
consecrated, talented, Church-of-England lay- 
man of London. 

Christ has been using him in a remarkable 
healing ministry of recent years throughout the 
six continents. Our friendship runs back over 
many years on both sides the Atlantic. 

One day I asked him to tell me the most nota- 
ble instances of healing of which he knew per- 
sonally. And he told me of two that I want to 
relate here. 

Mr. Hickson had gone to visit a woman in her 
home in the Midlands in England. She had 
been bedridden for years with rheumatoid 
arthritis. 

That disease, it will be remembered, affects the 
joints of the body. In this case the joints were 


How Far May Healing Be Expected 111 


locked up or rigid. The woman had not been 
able to move herself for several years. 

Mr. Hickson prayed for her healing. That 
evening she moved herself, the first time in 
years. 

Her husband wrote that the next morning she 
rose from the bed, dressed herself, and went 
about the house, as in the earlier years. 

That was the first of these two experiences. 
That disease is classed as incurable. 

The second incident was of a young boy of 
twelve years or so, with a club-foot, from his 
birth. 

He was brought to the church where a healing 
mission was being conducted. He came up 
to the front of the church with his attendant, 
wearing an iron brace to help him in walk- 
ing. 

As Mr. Hickson saw the boy in front of him, 
and with one quick glance took in the situation, 
he said to himself involuntarily, ‘‘Oh! this is a 
deformity !’’ 

His thought was that this was not a disease, 
but presented a much different, and much more 
difficult, case to handle. 

In telling me the story Mr. Hickson said that 
instantly that quiet inner voice said, ‘‘ Who is 
doing this? You or I?”’ 

And he said in his heart, ‘‘ Forgive me, Lord,”’ 
and aloud he said to the attendant, ‘‘ Take off the 
irons. ”’ 

He took the boy’s foot in his hands and made 
a simple bit of prayer, as is his custom. 


112 About the Healing Christ 


The next day the boy was brought again. 
There was some improvement marked in the 
foot. Again he prayed, and the boy’s foot 
gradually became quite normal, and he wore an 
ordinary shoe. 

How far may Christ’s healing be expected? 
We may have all we can take, as His Spirit 
guides our taking. 

Thou blessed Christ, thou solitary God-Man, 
who didst live a full life of human experience, 
and then didst die as none other did nor could 
nor can, 

And then didst live again, and still livest, and 
some day wilt finish up the racial end of Thine 
earth task, 

Help me now to reach out and up and take 
out of Thy Pierced Hand all Thou hast for me, 
to Thy glory among my fellows. 

I ask it on the ground of Thy blood shed for 
me, and Thy Word pledged to me. Amen, 


VI 


THE HUMAN SIDE OF HEALING AND 
HEALTH 


It is Christ’s will that we be pure in heart 
and motive and life, truly human in character 
up to the level of His humanness, fired by a 
noble passion, in the grip of a worthy purpose, 
in warm touch with Himself and with our fel- 
lows, and strong and vigorous in all our 
bodily functions. 


Health? or Healing. 


HEALTH is more than healing. There’s more 
of it. It calls for more of the Creator’s power. 
It means more to a man. And it will be the 
means of greater spiritual blessing if things are 
as they were meant to be. 

The task of keeping men in health, even as 
much health as they have, is immeasurably 
greater than healing all who need healing, even 
if they would all come for healing. 

Christ is greatest in the unrecognized power 
He is expending on men all the time. And all 
this power has the Calvary mark upon it. It is 
all red-tinged. 

Health means rhythm, the smooth working of 
all parts together. Disease is a break in the 
rhythm. Rhythm is ease. <A break in the 
rhythm means absence of ease, dis-ease, of some 
sort, 

113 


114 About the Healing Christ 


When there’s full rhythm within your body, 
and with your fellows, and with Christ, and with 
nature, there’s fulness of life flowing in and 
flooding out. 

But, but, there’s a break, a bad break in the 
rhythm of life, within and without and above. 
Within we call it disease, without friction and 
strife, strikes and war. Above we eall it sin. 

But, in spite of the break, Christ continues 
His touch of creative power on all life, giving 
health and strength. This becomes less as we 
hinder. 

There is full life only as we let Him do and 
give all He wants to. There’s the added touch, 
giving healing, where the way is open to Him 
for that. 

The first is the natural thing, the second is 
supernatural in addition to the natural. The 
first is for all, the second is for those needing 
it and who will come where He can give it. 

There’s one thing better than being healed. 
And this is being kept in health. Then healing 
isn’t needed. It’s the higher level, higher in 
intelligence and maturity of character. 

It is higher in obedience, and in the taking 
from Christ’s hand, day by day, all we need. 
And it costs Christ more in the continual giving 
out of power. 

Christ’s creative power through natural 
channels is commonplace, blessedly commonplace. 
It is everywhere. It is in every one, without 
exception. 

His supernatural power is _ exceptional. 


Human Side of Healing 115 


Where His natural power is allowed freest hand 
there is less need of the supernatural. 

But that break of sin is so sore, and so much 
in evidence everywhere, that there is a constant 
need of the supernatural. 

And there would be far more of the super- 
natural if the way were open. For Christ will 
do anything and everything to overcome the 
break of sin. He came that we might have life, 
and have it in uncommon measure. 

There is the divine side of health and healing, 
and there is the human side. The two inter- 
mingle so continually that it’s difficult to talk 
about the one without touching on the other. 

But, just now, we want to talk a little about 
the human side. There’s so much need of sim- 
ple, clear teaching. 

Living in that touch with Christ’s natural 
laws of life, and in the direct touch with Him- 
self, where health is the common thing, and 
healing is not needed, this, this, is the higher, 
the highest level of living. 

It is striking to find two distinct trails in the 
Old Testament, a healing trail and a health trail. 
The two run side by side. 

And it is of intense interest to find the health 
trail greater in the space it takes up, and in the 
emphasis laid upon it. 

It is the more interesting because this little 
Hebrew nation becomes a model of life in the 
ideals taught and insisted upon. 

We traced partially, in an earlier Talk,’ the 


“Ts It Christ’s Will to Heal Our Bodies To-day?” 


116 About the Healing Christ 


healing trail in the Old Testament. It was a 
trail of teaching and of healing. 

There is the plain teaching that God would 
heal. And it is used as a plea to pull them up to 
the higher level. And there is the string of 
incidents where men were actually healed in a 
positive supernatural way. 


The Jew Health Trail. 


Now, side by side with that, goes this other 
trail, longer, broader, more marked. It is a 
teaching about health. There is a remarkable 
course in personal hygiene here. Instruction is 
given repeatedly, and obedience is insisted upon. 

Some of these items may seem very homely and 
commonplace. But it is careful attention and 
obedience to detail that makes perfection in any- 
thing. 

Nothing is too common or commonplace if its 
practice means physical vigour. And physical 
vigour affects mental alertness and spiritual at- 
tainment. 

There is particular stress laid upon food. 
Pains are taken to specify the things they must 
not eat." And Moses repeats this in much detail 
in that last series of Quiet Talks in the Plains 
of Moab.” This would cultivate a thoughtfulness 
about food. 

Without any question there is a hygienic prin- 
ciple underlying all these instructions and re- 


* Leviticus 11: I-23. 
* Deuteronomy 14: 3-21. 


Human Side of Healing 117 


strictions. They were an agricultural people, 
with small exporting facilities, and so the fruits 
of trees and soil would naturally bulk big in 
their daily food. 

Then the item of physical exercise had a big 
place. There was plenty of work to be done, in 
connection with cultivation of fields, orchards, 
vineyards, ana common gardening. 

It was a common custom that every Hebrew 
had some fixed occupation. And every one 
shared in the daily tasks indoors and out. 

The ideal communities that have sprung up 
here and there, where all share in all tasks, have 
their truest highest ideal actually practised 
among these pastoral agricultural Hebrews. 

And one is keen to note the other side of this. 
There was particular attention given to rest, 
relaxation. There is a rare poise between work 
and rest aimed at here. 

There are four distinct items in the rest or 
relaxation program, which Moses was careful to 
mark out for them, at God’s direction. 

One day in seven was to be kept, sacred from 

toil, sacred to rest of body. The emphasis upon 
this is marked and continuous. 
. Three times a year there were special times of 
relaxation from their usual occupation, the Pass- 
over, the Feast of the First-fruits, and the Har- 
vest-home Festival. Each was for seven days. 

The men were to go up to Jerusalem to these 
feasts. Including travel it must have meant a 
ten-days’ relaxation for most of them, with an 
absorbing objective. 


118 About the Healing Christ 


Every seven years the land must lie fallow. 
Modern farmers might well note this. The land 
enriched itself. The land rested, and of course 
the people rested. 

There would be much to attend to, but there 
was a break in the work schedule. It meant the 
rest and relaxation of a change. 

Every fiftieth year was the time of special 
jubilation, following the plan of the seventh year. 
The average man would be likely to go through, 
at least, two of these jubilee years. 

Then, of course, in common with all men, every 
day had its night. There was the daily alterna- 
tion of rest and work. And nature itself pro- 
vides for more sleep in winter and less in sum- 
mer. A simple pastoral folk follows nature more 
closely. 

So, all told, there were six items in the com- 
mon Hebrew rest or relaxation program, a day 
of sleep for every day’s work, and a longer time 
of nightly sleep for half the year. 

Then there was one day in seven, three special 
times each year, one year in seven, and an extra 
year in every fifty years. 

Rather a remarkable program that. Yet 
the fact of its being provided by Moses, at God’s 
direction, is immensely suggestive. 

Physical exercise, and time for the mind to 
store up and meditate, time for social recreation 
and enjoyment, time for worship, all this becomes 
of greatest interest from the health point of view. 

And particular directions were given about 
the ablutions, the frequent all-over bathing by 


Human Side of Healing 119 


the priests. And the priests were the practical 
rulers of the people. 

The priesthood was the fixed system of na- 
tional administration through the centuries. 
They were the leaders. And what the leaders do 
the people do. Like priest like people. 

There were special directions for special bath- 
ing in connection with their sanitary and quar- 
antine codes. They were a bathing people. 
Cleanliness of person was a fixed habit. 

There were careful community sanitation 
regulations covering the individual tents and the 
whole encampment in the Wilderness, and after- 
ward when settled in Canaan. 

The quarantine regulations were explicit and 
rigid, inspection by experts, isolation, and segre- 
gation. The strictest watch was constantly kept 
on the people’s health, on all suspicious eases, 
and on the diseased. Quarantine is worthless 
unless rigid, and rigidly enforeed. Their ideals 
have never been improved upon. 

And, of course, their inflexible law of circum- 
cision was rooted down in the physical. Apart 
from other significance it was a hygienic regula- 
tion. It belonged in their scheme of cleanliness 
and provision against infection. 

Now, note keenly, that the Hebrews were 
essentially an out-of-doors people. They lived 
in God’s open air. 

There were the four hundred years in Egypt. 
Egypt was an open air country characteristically, 
and is to this day. The absence of rain, the dry- 
ness of the air, and its rare tonic qualities, were 


120 About the Healing Christ 


marked features, and are. The open air habit 
had a good start in Egypt. 

The forty years in the Wilderness sands sim- 
ply meant forty years in the open air. Quite 
likely most of them slept out in the open. 

Moses himself was habituated to this open air 
life through his sheep-tending years in Midian, 
as well as his earlier Egypt years, and later 
Wilderness years. 

And there’s one more item worth mentioning 
in this health memorandum. Their land laws, 
their scheme of inheritance, the reversion of land 
to the original owner every fifty years which 
entered into all sales and transfers, these, of 
course, would tend to contentment of mind re- 
garding the future. Fear of the future, mostly 
groundless, makes a shorter road to the grave- 
yard. 

Here are eight items in their national health 
program to which they were habituated through 
the centuries. It included food, work or ex- 
ercise, rest and relaxation and play, personal 
cleanliness, community sanitary measures, quar- 
antine against disease, open air living, and a 
measure of contentment about the future, the 
rainy day. 

This is the health trail that runs all through 
these Old Testament pages, and clearly ran all 
through the physical life of this remarkable 
race of people. 

Without doubt it plays a large part in at- 
tempting to explain the astonishing physical 
vigour of the Jews even to-day. 


Human Side of Healing 121 


Inheritance persists. They have suffered per- 
secutions, hardships, privations, that would have 
killed off any ordinary people. Plainly they are 
not ordinary people. Their health program 
certainly was not ordinary. It was rather extra- 
ordinary. What nation to-day can come near 
it? 

This is the health trail running side by side 
with that blessed healing trail. It persists 
’ through these old pages. It puts a remarkable 
emphasis on the human side of health and heal- 
ing. 

It was planned by God. It surely becomes a 
personal model for the thoughtful man to-day, 
and especially the thoughtful Christian man. 


The Eden Health Model. 


Now, there’s another model of life in these 
older pages. The Hebrew nation, as planned by 
God, gives one model. Here’s another. It’s yet 
earlier. It comes in before the break of sin had 
set things so askew. 

It’s the model of the true full human, the 
human as yet unhurt by sin. It’s the Adam- 
and-Eve-in-Eden model. 

It is really God’s ideal of human life. And 
it is put here at the very first where any one 
ean quickly see it. 

Of course, I am a little old-fashioned about 
man’s start on this earth. This other teaching 
has so befogged all the air that it’s quite re- 
freshing to turn back to God’s own picture. I 
am rather fond of some old-fashioned things, 


122 About the Healing Christ 


water, open air, fresh fruit, natural wheat, the 
Bible, and the like. 

Adam was made the true full normal human, 
by direct act of God. He stood at the highest 
point of mature manhood, physically, mentally, 
and in spirit understanding. 

He knew civilization at its highest, in minia- 
ture. For civilization does not consist in the 
culture which the Greeks had, nor the highly 
organized life of the Roman, nor the organized 
complexity of modern times. 

Civilization is a moral thing. Civilization 
means harmonious life in contact with others. 
And the essential thing there is moral ideals 
and moral conduct. So far as any civilization 
lacks these it is less than real civilization. 

Look at God’s picture, His model in Eden. 
It is simple, delightfully simple, but never crude, 
and certainly not savage. 

Here is a human, fresh from the hand of God. 
He is on terms of intimacy with God. They talk 
and walk and are busily occupied with their 
work together. 

This man has an intimate congenial human 
friend at his side sharing all his life. He has a 
daily occupation, caring for a garden. 

He has before him a great inspiring task, sub- 
duing the whole earth. There’s the immediate 
and the distant, the near and the far, something 
for hands and something for mind. 

He lived in the open air, sleeping as well as 
working and resting there. The second day he 
lived was marked as a rest day. 


a 


Human Side of Healing 1238 


He had a daily task, work and exercise com- 
bined. He had a fruit diet. His food was all 
sun-cooked. He had pure water to drink. 
There was running water to bathe in. 

_Is it not a winsome picture? One is more 
than ever insistent on getting away from the 
modern phrase ‘‘the ascent of man,’’ and to- 
ward the older phrase ‘‘the descent of man.’’ 

Certainly it would be a going up to go back 
to that old Eden standard of civilization and 
culture and life. 

And there is a plain intimation, too, that this 
first man’s bodily vigour hinged on his keeping 
in touch with his friendly Companion, God. 

Do you remember that day they are standing 
under that tree of opportunity? Through choos- 
ing not to eat of it as God wished him not to 
do, choosing to choose God’s choice, Adam would 
be stepping into a still closer intimacy with 
God. The highest thing can come only through 
choice. 

There is a gentle but very plain word of 
warning about that tree. He could misuse the 
opportunity it gave him. He could break friend- 
ship with God if he chose. 

And this is the word of warning, ‘‘ For in the 
day that thou eatest thereof, dying, thou shalt 
die.’’* The dying would come automatically 
through the break. 

There would be a beginning, a continued 
process, and a final result. The moment he ate 
was the beginning. The process went on for 


Genesis 2:17, paraphrase. 


124 About the Healing Christ 


years. The actual bodily death didn’t come till 
long years after. 

Now, that intimation naturally includes the 
reverse, 2. €., if thou keep in touch with me, by 
thine own voluntary choice, wing, thou shalt 
live. 

There would be the same movement in the 
opposite direction, a beginning, a process, a 
final result. Choosing God’s way would bring 
him yet closer to God. 

That would be the beginning of a new life 
by his own choice. And that would grow from 
less to more until a fulness of life would come, 
such as one simply can’t take in. 

Touch with God is the basis of full life, bodily, 
mental, of the spirit. The other word for touch 
is obedience. 

Obedience is a music word. It means the 
rhythm of God’s will and a man’s will. No 
sweeter music was ever made on earth, or heard 
in heaven. 

All this, you notice, has to do simply with the 
human side of health. This early model gives 
God’s own thought of the true full natural 
human man, as He planned him. 

This Eden idea says, in effect, that a man 
should have a noble passion, a human friend, a 
daily task, and an outreaching purpose that 
ealls for all there is in him. 

His immediate bodily needs are open air, sim- 
ple food, the exercise of a daily task, a time of 
rest, and running water near by. 

This first man’s passion was for his Friend, 





Human Side of Healing 125 


to please Him. To carry out His plan. By his 
side was his complemental self, his one nearest 
human friend with whom all his life was shared. 

There was a garden of trees and flowers and 
all growing things to care for, and the cultiva- 
tion of the whole earth entrusted to him to think 
about and plan for. 


The Christian and the True Human. 


Now, will you notice keenly that the Christian 
life means simply the true human life? Sin 
made the break. Christ mends the break. He 
renews and restores man. The natural thing na- 
tive to a man’s being is this of living the true, 
full, Christian life. 

Anything that isn’t really Christian isn’t hu- 
man. It’s lower down. It’s less, or a bad more, 
or a distortion. Sin, selfishness, are lower down 
than the human level. They hurt the true hu- 
man. They hurt our health and strength. 

The true Christian life is the real key to 
health, and to healing where healing is needed. 
The emphasis, of course, is on that word ‘‘true.’’ 

We are so used to the cheapened, thinned-out 
meanings, being ‘‘saved’’ from hell and into 
heaven, church membership, with some attend- 
ance, some giving of money and maybe service, 
more or less, as happens to suit one’s ideas; this 
seems the sum total ofttimes. 

It’s a sort of insurance policy. The chief 
thing is keeping up the premiums. It’s a sort 
of immunity bath, a quarantine measure. Some- 
times it is the ticket of admission into certain 


126 About the Healing Christ 


social circles. So much Christianity has no 
ethical quality to it. It never hurts anybody’s 
conscience, nor changes his habits. 

Of course, in the simple, true meaning the 
Christian life is a tender passion burning deep, 
and then deeper. It’s a purpose gripping all 
one’s powers. 

It means on the inner side spirit fellowship 
with the Man that died, on the outer side a 
warm upright human touch with one’s fellows. 

It means the Jesus passion in control. It is 
very simple. Some of the simplest unlettered 
homeliest folks, as well as some of the most 
scholarly and cultured, quite understand all this. 
They live it. 

Christ enriches everything He touches. The 
Devil vulgarizes everything he can lay his hands 
on. Christ makes the commonest thing hallowed. 
The Devil makes the purest, the hallowed things, 
vulgarly common and cheap. 

The Devil puts the devilish touch into man’s 
life, sometimes foul, sometimes cultured, always 
devilish. Christ restores the hurt human up to 
the true human level. Calvary neutralizes the 
Devil’s power, and restores and enriches the 
Eden ideal. The new Eden has the passion of 
sacrificial love in it. 

Now, it is of the simple real Christian life 
that I am thinking when I say this: the Chris- 
tian life is the key to health and to healing. 
This is the human side of both. 


Human Side of Healing 127 
One’s Mental Attitude. 


There are two things that will grow up in 
such a simple, true, Christian life. They are 
simple things, but they lie at the very founda- 
tion. 

They are, a right mental attitude, and an in- 
telligent obedience to the laws of health. And 
these are the two things to be emphasized in this 
- Quiet Talk. 

Let us talk first about that right mental atti- 
tude. I do not mean that you are to try to have 
a right mental attitude, simply. That becomes 
incidental. The emphasis is on something else. 
That attitude comes naturally out of that some- 
thing else. 

I mean this: you think about Christ. He died 
for you. He has won the love of your heart. 
You trust Him. 

You believe Him. You accept what He says 
in the Book. You follow where He plainly 
leads. All this is what faith is. It is thinking 
about Him. 

You get filled up with Him, who He is, how 
He loved and loves, what He did, His plans for 
you, and His promises to you. 

You are full of this, that He is living to-day. 
He is all absorbed with things down here. He’s 
intensely interested in you, with personal solici- 
tude for your personal need, and with a plan for 
your life. 

This is what faith means; not thinking about 
your faith, thinking about Him. It isn’t looking 
in; it’s looking up—to Him. 


128 About the Healing Christ 


Now, once that gets fixed in some measure, as 
a habit, a growing habit, it will affect your 
mental attitude. 

Your plans and problems, your difficulties and 
perplexities, your personal habits and tempta- 
tion, all will instinctively be affected by this 
mental attitude. 

Christ will loom up in your mind practically 
as the biggest thing in all your life. You will 
get into the habit of connecting everything with 
Him. And that mental attitude will vitally and 
radically affect your body. 

The worst enemy we all have (outside of the 
Devil himself) is fear. I mean the fear that is 
a dread of something. 

There are three kinds of fear. The fear of 
reverence grows out of love, and is good. The 
fear of caution grows out of the presence or 
possibility of danger, and is only good. 

The fear that is afraid of something or some 
one, a dread, a slavish fear, is bad, only bad, 
and is a positive injury to one’s body. 

It may grow out of ignorance. Often it is a 
result of overwrought nerves. It exerts an in- 
calculable influence on one’s bodily condition. 
It controls the imagination, and the imagination 
controls the body. 

All diseases and bodily ailments of whatever 
sort fall into three groups. Those that are im- 
aginary; they have no existence at all except in 
imagination. 

Then there are those ailments which are the 
result of the imagination’s influence on the 


Human Side of Healing 129 


body. And then there are ailments originating 
otherwise. 

It will seem astonishing if I say that a very 
large proportion of all bodily ailments is above 
the ears, or have their origin there, that is, in 
the imagination. And the smaller proportion is 
below the ears, 

This seems astonishing. It may be honestly 
- questioned by those not familiar with the sub- 
ject. But inereased observation only tends to 
confirm the truth of the statement. 

Job says, ‘‘I feared a fear and it came upon 
me.’’’ His sense of dread acted so on his im- 
agination that it actually produced in his body 
the thing he feared. 


The Power of Fear. 


Only a little thinking will remind any one 
that fear, the slavish fear that dreads, is in- 
bred in most people. 

From the cradle up, the whip of fear is the 
commonest thing known. This fear is instilled, 
unconsciously, unintentionally, ignorantly, ha- 
bitually, from earliest years on through school 
life and long after. 

It is inbred further by the very evil abnormal 
atmosphere of our surroundings. It becomes a 
habit of mind. And the actual bodily injury 
done is quite beyond calculation. 

An illustration that has become notable of this 
sort of thing is the story of the man condemned 


1Job 3:25—free reading. 


130 About the Healing Christ 


to death for murder. A group of physicians 
proposed an experiment as a matter of scientific 
research. The civil authorities concerned 
agreed. 

They proposed to the condemned man that he 
submit to a serious surgical operation. And if 
he survived his sentence of death would be re- 
mitted and he allowed to go free. He agreed. 

He was stretched on the operating table, face 
down. A thin bit of cold steel was slowly drawn 
across his back as though a knife cutting. 

At the same time it was arranged that water 
would drip from his back, drop by drop, stead- 
ily down, so it could easily be heard. 

The physicians talked together in his hear- 
ing, giving the impression that he was bleeding 
from a wound, and would certainly bleed to 
death. 

The man actually expired. Yet his body had 
not been touched except as described. I am not 
defending the deceit used. 

It is a striking illustration of the slavery of 
the body to the imagination. He imagined he 
was surely bleeding to death. And the imagina- 
tion actually brought death. He feared a fear 
and it came upon him. 

I recall a mother whose baby was ill. The 
mother’s milk didn’t agree, but seemed to nau- 
seate. The mother had been a trained nurse. 
She is an earnest Christian woman. 

But certain very difficult circumstances that 
touched her very closely had embittered her 
spirit extremely. As she thought into things 


Human Side of Healing 131 


prayerfully she was led to see just where her 
baby’s trouble lay. 

She frankly told the physician that she knew 
why her baby was sick. Her bitter spirit was 
poisoning the milk in her breast. And the milk 
was poisoning the child. 

She set herself by prayer to overcome that 
bitter spirit. Her mental attitude was injuring 
‘her own body, and her babe’s. 

The changed mental attitude was followed by 
a change in her babe’s health. The true Chris- 
tian spirit certainly had a healing effect on both 
her own body and her child’s. 

If one’s heart is full of a spirit of confidence 
and love the mother’s milk is more nourishing. 
If one is angry the spittle becomes poisonous; 
if love dominates the spittle is healing. Love 
heals one’s body. Its reverse hurts the body. 

I know intimately the instance of a friend 
who was under sore stress of spirit regarding 
one tenderly loved. The thing ran along for a 
good while. 

She was an utterly consecrated Christian. 
But unconsciously to herself her anxiety was 
greater than her faith in the outcome. And her 
hair began to grow gray quite perceptibly. 

Some bit of the Book in a time of prayer 
brought a change. She quit the unconscious 
worry, and rested, actually rested mentally and 
in spirit, on the word of Christ regarding the 
loved one. 

And again it was quite noticeable that the 
graying of her hair stopped. It stopped quite 


132 About the Healing Christ 


definitely from that time. Those closest to her 
marked it and spoke of it. 

It is a commonplace with the medical frater- 
nity that the mental attitude affects, and affects 
most seriously, bodily conditions. 

It has been demonstrated that anger, fear, and 
the like, not only check secretions and have a 
paralyzing effect internally, but actually cause 
the secretion of poisonous substances within the 
body. 


Fath Runs Fear Out-of-Doors. 


Now, the thing to mark most keenly is this: a 
simple childlike trust in Christ drives that spirit 
of dread and fear clean out.’ 

It changes radically one’s mental attitude. 
The imagination is radically affected. And that 
change at once begins to work changes in the 
body. 

It works in three ways. It will actually re- 
move imaginary ills, and also those ills result- 
ing from a tortured imagination. It will ae- 
tually work toward changing bodily conditions, 
healing where there has been weakness and dis- 
ease. 

It will tend steadily toward keeping one in 
prime condition, in full vigour and strength. It 
will actually ward off disease threatening by 
contact. 

That new mental attitude reacts in a marked 
way on one’s nerves. There is a normal re- 
laxing of tense nerves. Tense nerves are re- 


*t John 4: 18. 


Human Side of Healing 183 


sponsible for bodily ailments to an inealeulable 
extent. A normal relaxation removes a long list 
of bodily ills. 

The latest expert word on defective eyesight 
is that it is caused by nervous tension in the 
eye itself, very largely. It is said that relaxa- 
tion is the great corrective, making glasses not 
needed. And this theory is being worked out 
- with some most surprising results. 

And, be it marked keenly, all this is simply 
on the natural level of action. I have tried to 
make it clear that Christ uses supernatural 
power in healing when need be. 

But this thing I am speaking of now is on the 
purely natural level. The right touch with 
Christ affects the mental attitude. And the 
mental attitude controls largely the functions 
and sensations of the body. 

From a reliable source the incident comes of 
a famous Philadelphia physician now deceased. 
The woman who consulted him told the story. 

She was of a nervous temperament, and her 
numerous troubles had worried her to such a 
degree as to affect her health, and even threat- 
ened to affect her mental balance. 

The eminent specialist listened, and then 
quietly told her to read her Bible an hour a day, 
and report again in a month. 

She was indignant. He gently insisted. Re- 
flection led her conscientiously to do as he ad- 
vised. The change was most marked. On re- 
porting again, she asked the physician how he 
knew just what she needed. 


184 About the Healing Christ 


The famous physician turned to a worn, 
marked Bible lying open on his table, and said 
with deep earnestness, ‘‘Madam, if I were to 
omit my daily reading of this Book I would lose 
my greatest source of strength and skill. 

‘‘T never go to an operation, or a distressing 
ease, without reading my Bible. Your @ase 
called not for medicine but for a source of peace 
and strength outside your own mind. I gave 
you my own prescription. I knew it would 
cure.’’ 

Turning your thought toward Christ fills you 
with the conception of His reality, His love, His 
power. Time daily spent over the Book, reach- 
ing through to Christ, brooding thoughtfully 
about Him, all this brings that attitude of heart 
and mind commonly ealled faith. 

It fills your heart with love, love for Him. 
And love, this drawing of you out tenderly to- 
ward Him, this casts that slavish fear out. 

You don’t try to turn it out. You’re thinking 
of Christ. He draws your heart out to Him. 
You resist the fear. It goes. The love drives 
it out. You find it gone. 

Now note, that simple faith in Christ does two 
things. It releases that natural creative heal- 
ing power within your body. That power 
swings into action. Its power is beyond ealeu- 
lation. At least, nobody has yet calculated it 
fully or adequately. 

It does a second thing. It opens the way for 
any direct supernatural touch needed in addi- 
tion to that natural creative healing power. It 


Human Side of Healing 135 


was in the days of his wisdom that Solomon 
said, ‘‘ A tranquil heart is the life of the flesh.’’’ 

Now this is the first of the two main things 
we are talking about, the right mental attitude 
which comes as a natural result of a simple, true 
faith in Christ. 

This is the first half of the chapter of what 
happens. But, mark keenly, it is only half. 
-There’s a second half. 


The Body—Master or Servant? 


The second thing that will mark the true 
Christian is—what? obedience? That is only 
part of the answer. Shall I say obedience to 
God’s laws? 

Again that doesn’t tell it out fully. It is this, 
obedience to Christ in everything, and this in- 
cludes the common laws of health. 

Now, some saintly folk will begin to think 
that this is rather dropping to a low level. ‘‘The 
laws of our body!’’ you say. 

The truth is it is climbing up a bit for most 
of us. Oh, yes, I know you say you would 
gladly sacrifice bodily comforts and strength for 
Christ’s sake. And you mean it. 

Yes, but you need to be on your guard lest you 
are disregarding the law of your body for your 
own sake, because of what you prefer, or don’t 
prefer. 

And, and, this may deprive Christ of the mes- 
senger He needs. You may be giving Him a 
poorer crippled service when you needn’t. And 


*Proverbs 14: 30, 


1386 About the Healing Christ 


it may be in an emergency when your poorer 
service, your failure, slows up His plans. 

For Christ’s sake, in the thick of the emer- 
gency of life, the true Christian seeks to make his 
body the strongest possible, the most disciplined 
ehannel through which Christ’s power may flow. 
And this is done through a thoughtful obedi- 
ence to its laws. 

This is keeping “‘the body under,’’ under the 
control of that Christ passion. Disobeying its 
law, carelessness, not-thinking, may be letting 
your body get the upper hand. 

It gets from under, up on top, hindering your 
best service. Christ has been robbed of the 
needed service of many a saintly child of His, 
through unconscious thoughtless disregard of his 
body, or worse. 

The touchstone of the Christian life is the 
same as the touchstone of the true human life, 
obedience. But obedience is not a matter of do- 
ing or not doing certain things. 

It’s on a higher level than that. It’s doing 
as a certain One wants or would prefer. Not 
‘*things,’’ but ‘‘a Person’’ holds your eye. It’s 
getting or keeping in better shape for the er- 
rand He has sent you on. 

The thing that seems small or trivial in itself 
is now thought seriously about. Because so you 
ean be a truer Christian in your conduct, and 
so you are better fitted for what that One 
wants done, and more serviceable to your fel- 
lows. 

It’s astonishing the commonness of indiffer- 


Human Side of Healing 187 


ence to, and disobedience of, the rhythmic laws 
of health, among not only good but really saintly 
people. 

Such disobedience or indifference or careless- 
ness in other matters would rule a man out of 
life. It would make him a forced exile. 

He couldn’t keep a bank account without care- 
ful obedience to the laws of the bank. He 
- eouldn’t run an automobile, nor be a student in 
any sort of college or school, nor run a success- 
ful business, nor move in polite society, nor be 
member of a club. Obedience to law (a recog- 
nized agreed-upon sequence of action) is the 
commonplace of all intercourse. 

And the thing moves up to a wholly higher 
level when it concerns a Christian, and espe- 
cially when it concerns his body. For the Chris- 
tian aims to live the truly ideal life in a prac- 
tical way, for Christ’s sake, as well as for his 
own. 

And his body is the fine tool he works with. 
He’ll surely keep his tool in the best possible 
shape all the time for the sake of the work it 
does. 

The true Christian takes pains to learn about 
his body, and to think into its need, that so he 
ean be free of his body, free to do his work. 

Obedience means intelligence, bemg informed, 
becoming skilled. So the habit of a wise obedi- 
ence is formed, and one is strong and free. One 
thinks about his body so he can forget it in the 
thick of his work. 

It is striking that the Book of God gives the 


138 About the Healing Christ 


principles of everything we need. There are the 
two models here for the bodily life. The earliest 
is Adam in Eden before the serpent got in. 

The second is the model of God’s messenger 
nation. It is much fuller and more explicit, be- 
cause the serpent had gotten in. And now there 
are things to guard against. These have been 
already spoken of. 

Recalling these two models, there are some 
six things that the thoughtful Christian will 
think about, so he needn’t think about them 
when absorbed in his work. 

In a sane, intelligent way he will think about 
and form certain habits. Then he is free to do 
something worth while. 


Siz or Sick? 


These six things are, food, air, exercise, sleep, 
cleansing, and posture. Just a few words about 
these. 

The body needs food. It needs enough. It is 
hurt by too much. How much? Enough to 
keep it strong and fit, and no more. 

It has become quite a commonplace that we 
all eat too much. Drunkards and topers are 
supposed to be gone, but eat-ards, and food 
topers, are still in abundant evidence. 

Much of our strength is taken up in digesting 
food that tasted good, but adds nothing to our 
strength. Indeed it takes from strength and 
makes us less fit. 

The sense of taste shouldn’t decide what we 


Human Side of Healing 189 


eat. It has its important place. But, knowl- 
edge of food, the sense of taste, and keeping fit 
for one’s work, these together should decide. 

The body needs food of the sort that will 
keep it in the best fighting shape. One natu- 
rally believes that the Creator thought about 
our bodily needs in the provision He made. 

For instance, wheat has in it numerous sub- 
‘stances that our bodies need. If commercialism 
takes most of that nourishment out, so the whit- 
ened product can be stored without spoiling and 
loss of money, one naturally avoids such a 
product. 

Using it is robbing his body of certain things 
it must have for health and vigour. And this 
same sort of thinking can be applied to all foods. 

If the way the food is cooked washes much or 
most of it away, the finer, subtler elements, 
clearly the body isn’t getting something it needs. 
A man may be partially starved, even with a 
loaded table, and a full stomach. 

Proportion of food figures in. Adam in Eden 
reached up for his food. He had a fruit and 
nut diet. It was all sun-cooked. 

After the Flood Noah reached down as well 
as up. He added the things that grew under 
and close to the soil. And he added animal 
food. 

That would suggest that the original diet was 
a fruit and nut diet. It would suggest that 
flesh food was only one of three sorts. That 
puts it in a minor place. This suggests pro- 
portion, a balancing of one’s food. 


140 About the Healing Christ 


But all life has greatly changed. It is not 
normal, What is absolutely best (outside of 
morals), is very often not best under certain 
circumstances. And this change affects our 
bodies and their need. 

If a Christian man, that is a really human 
man, finds that much less meat and more of the 
succulent and leafy vegetables and the juicy 
fruits, day by day, helps him to be less irritable, 
and in better control of his temper, he will be 
quick to make the change. 

For the life is more than food, much more, 
his Christian life. And in that case he will find 
his body stronger too. 

The thoughtful man comes to know that a 
radical change takes place in his body about the 
time an initial four gets into his age. The build- 
ing stage is past. It required certain foods that 
go to building the body up to its maturity. 

Now, as he passes that line of bodily change, 
food is taken simply to repair the waste of his 
day’s work. 

More than that much adds excessive weight, 
which itself is a diseased condition, and leads to 
other diseased conditions. Weight over normal 
is a diseased and abnormal condition. 

The great insurance companies are modifying 
their standard tables of age and weight. The 
standard of weights is being made less. Money 
sharpens their wits. 

The thoughtful man comes to find that after 
a certain age a smaller quantity, the lessening 
or omitting of the heavier foods (meats, eggs, 


Human Side of Healing 141 


and the like), actually adds to his physical 
and mental vigour. 

And as a Christian he does this, for it affects 
his Christian character, and his usefulness to 
his Master. 

It is notable that the common diet of many 
nations runs so largely to the meat-potato-white- 
bread sort of food, and so little to the succulent 
-and green leafy vegetables and juicy fruits. 

Yet the dietary experts insist on the necessity 
of a balanced diet, and especially a lessening of 
the heavier foods and an increase of the lighter, 
in middle life and after. 

The thoughtful Christian thinks into these 
things in a sober, sane, sensible way because he 
is a Christian. He adjusts his habits. So he 
keeps his body under control. 

And so he is freer and stronger for his life 
task. And there is a fine, quaint homeliness in 
the way the Holy Spirit guides in just such 
things. 

I recall an unusually saintly man of New 
York City, a great Christian leader, much blessed 
in service, a layman, of full bodily habit. 

He had a serious illness. He taught healing, 
and had experienced it. But now it didn’t come. 
And he wondered why. There’s a special bit of 
holding quiet in spirit, and waiting on God in 
prayer, to know if there was anything hindering. 

And, he said, in my presence, that an answer 
came. It was in a single word. It was the 
name of a certain kind of meat of which I 
imagine he may have been rather fond. 


142 About the Healing Christ 


He said that quiet inner voice uttered dis- 
tinctly one word, ‘‘pork.’’ As he told the story 
he said, pointing to a Bible, ‘‘It was there, but 
I hadn’t. obeyed it.’’ I am not discussing pork 
just now. The thing is both simpler and deeper. 
The Holy Spirit teaches regarding the homely 
things, if we want to know. 

Man is an open air being. Our abnormal 
modern life, called (or miscalled) civilization, 
has made him an indoors animal. One of the 
most prevalent disease plagues, tubereulosis of 
the lungs, is an indoors disease. 

There is no question that the common indoors 
habit both weakens and shortens life. As things 
actually are we can’t live a wholly outdoors life. 

But the nearer we can come to it the nearer 
we are to the true full normal human. And no 
words are adequate to tell the physical blessed- 
ness of sleep in the open air. There is nothing 
that so rebuilds and cushions one’s nerves. 

All out-of-doors air is good air, night and day. 
God’s air is always good. It’s the shut-up, 
warmed-up, used-over-and-over-again, air that 
poisons us. 

Habitual deep breathing, thorough ventila- 
tion of every space used, and particularly all 
the out-of-doors air it is possible to get, this is 
native to us. And the more we ean actually 
stay out in the open the nearer we come to nor- 
mal conditions. 

And the body needs exercise. Most of us 
have to work with our bodily strength for a 
living, and that gives a certain amount of exer- 


Human Side of Healing 148 


eise. Though modern life is apt to make it 
partial and quite onesided. 

Watch your baby on the floor twisting and 
stretching strenuously, pulling and turning. 
That’s its exercise. That helps it digest the 
food, and keep healthy and grow. 

Walking is by far the best single exercise. 
No one thing is so good for health as an easy 
' swinging walk, with easy shoes, and loose fitting 
clothing, and head up, and chest out, and arms 
swinging. 

One can walk away any weakness or disease. 
The exceptions are few. Graduated walking, 
beginning with little and increasing gradually, 
until several miles are easily done, will work 
wonders simply in getting and keeping in bodily 
vigour. And the mental stimulus and spirit re- 
freshing keep pace. 

And so, very soberly, one says that the true 
Christian walks for health, for Jesus’ sake. For 
so he is more usable. He can be of better serv- 
ice to his fellows. And he finds the zest, the 
sheer zest, of being alive. 

If the editor of a religious paper finds that 
an hour’s easy swinging walk to his desk or away 
from it, clears his brain, and steadies his nerves, 
and sharpens his sentences, and makes clearer 
and simpler his pen-preaching and teaching, if 
so, he’ll never miss that walk. 

He is a better editor, a better religious teacher. 
Men and women are helped more. Christ has a 
fuller use of him. He could now write a helpful 
article on walking as a means of grace. 


144 About the Healing Christ 


But exercise should be on the baby system. 
It should include everything from toes to hair, 
and out to finger-tips. 

Ten minutes given, morning and night, with 
loose garments, in the open air or at an open 
window, to a simple series of stretching exer- 
cises, regardless of age, is a necessity for vigor- 
ous health. 

The advertising columns are full of sugges- 
tion. There are plenty of books to run through. 
One can make up his own simple series of move- 
ments. 

The point to be kept in mind is that the body 
is stretched, thoroughly stretched from head to 
foot. Watch the baby. He is a good teacher of 
how to do it. Or the eat after a nap. 

The item of sleep gets in without any effort. 
Some people ought to wake up. But some ought 
to sleep more. Sometimes sleep is a confession 
of faith, when it’s sleep time and your body 
needs it, but anxiety keeps you awake, or your 
nerves. 

The thoughtful Christian thinks about his 
sleep until a good sleep-habit is fixed. These 
nerve-racking days one must sleep. 

And the earlier in the night it is started the 
better. Sleep before midnight zs beauty sleep, 
because it is strength sleep. 

One plans for enough, sometimes foregoing 
something else. He thinks about the details that 
help sound, deep, refreshing sleep. Sleep re- 
news the strength while food repairs waste. 

If the mother finds that a half-hour’s lying 


Human Side of Healing 145 


down in a quiet room in daytime, whether sleep 
comes or not, makes her more patient and gentle 
with the children, and with better self-control in 
the home, she will prayerfully plan for it. 

So she is a truer Christian mother, and shapes 
better the children’s character, present and fu- 
ture. She becomes more serviceable to her Mas- 

ter. 

And cleansing figures in so much bigger than 
any of us takes in. It is of two sorts, inner 
cleansing and outer. There are people who 
bathe fastidiously who would be shocked at their 
filthy condition inside. 

Health, it is sometimes said, is dependent on 
three things, food, assimilation, elimination. 
That is, enough of the right sort of food, the 
ability to digest and absorb it into the body, and 
the prompt full throwing out of all the waste. 

It is surprising how much waste there is to 
be thrown out. Nature provides two ways for 
its removal, through the skin and through cer- 
tain inner organs. 

So many diseases are dirt diseases. Often the 
disease that comes is merely nature trying to 
eet rid of this accumulation of filth. 

A healthful body takes care of its own waste 
products. Careful, prayerful obedience to the 
laws of the body makes a healthful body. 

Careless indifference is pretty apt to make the 
body very dirty, inside. Bathing, and especially 
preserving the bodily rhythm, are not beneath 
the attention of the thoughtful Christian. 

And posture figures in much bigger than one 


146 About the Healing Christ 


suspects. We Americans are great sinners in 
the matter of posture. Man is the one upright 
animal of all creation. But that fact is slurred 
over this side the salt water. 

Our American habit of slumping down in the 
chair, sitting on the small of the back, drooping 
the shoulders and the like, is a serious thing. 

The vital organs are crowded for space. The 
whole inner machinery is badly disturbed. The 
habit of upright posture, standing and sitting 
and walking, affects one’s health enormously. 

But proper posture is impossible without easy- 
fitting low-heeled shoes. Nothing is more in- 
jurious to the whole inner organism than these 
strange high heels. 


The Blood is the Life. 


There’s a significant sentence in the Book, 
‘‘the blood is the life.’’ There is much said all 
through the Scriptures about blood. And there 
is the deep spiritual significance in much of it 
referring to the sacrifice of Christ. 

But quite apart from that teaching just now, 
there is here a great truth for our bodily health. 
The blood is indeed the life of our bodies. 

The stomach makes it, the heart pumps it, the 
lungs purify it, proper exercise keeps it in 
proper circulation. The whole bodily rhythm is 
concerned with the blood, its quality and quan- 
tity and its being kept moving just as planned. 

Good blood, in right quantity, kept moving 
naturally through the body, means full vigor- 
ous life. Poor blood, not enough blood, means a 


Human Side of Healing 147 


poor defective quality of life. Bad blood means 
diseased life. Congested blood, too much in one 
part and too little somewhere else, means dis- 
order, disease. 

Enough blood, not too much, of the right 
quality, not too rich, in normal circulation, gives 
vigorous abundant physical life. Any slip at 
- any point means either defective or diseased life. 
And the sort of food decides the sort of blood. 

There are two purposes in bathing. The com- 
mon use, of course, is for cleansing. The other 
purpose is to help circulation of the blood, and 
so through that affect the health in a radical 
way. 

An old German priest years ago became fa- 
mous for his so-called water cure. And water 
cures sprang up everywhere. The dear old man 
thought it was simply some virtue in the water. 
And of course that part is true. 

But the thing goes much deeper than that. 
It is the application of varying temperatures to 
the body through the medium of water. This 
affects the disturbed congestion of blood. 

Cold water drives the congested blood away. 
Hot water draws it to where it is needed. The 
skilful application of various temperatures rad- 
ically changes the circulation of the blood. And 
it is astonishing how long a list of bodily ills 
can be quite removed in this way. 

There’s a lot of natural healing and of health 
in our bath tubs if one knew how to use them 
in this way. 

On the same principle walking in the bare feet 


148 About the Healing Christ 


on the grass in the dew of the morning acts as a 
stimulant. 

Nature hurries warm blood to the feet to re- 
lieve the sense of cold. The excess of blood in 
the head or somewhere else is relieved. 

There is no finer tonie for tired brain or over- 
wrought nerves than walking in bare feet on 
the cool dewy grass. Care should be taken not 
to let the feet be cold afterward. 

All this sort of talk may seem rather trivial 
and homely to some good saintly folk. But, but, 
if the tired-out preacher Sunday night finds that 
dipping his feet in sharply cold water, repeat- 
edly, for a few minutes, and then drying 
thoroughly, and maybe a bit of friction on the 
soles, 

If, I say, he finds this steadies his nerves and 
refreshes his brain, plainly he can be of more 
service to his congregation. Their sleep can be 
postponed until after the church service is over. 

For the shortest road to a nervously tired, 
aching head is usually through the feet. The 
two ends may meet helpfully in that case. 
Proper care of the feet is often the surest way 
to help the head. And this includes easy natu- 
ral sort of shoes. 

If that same preacher finds that the habitual 
daily scrubbing of the soles of his feet with a 
stiff nail-brush full of lather clears the cob- 
webs out of his weary head, 

And so, makes the sermon better, the sentences 
clearer and sharper, the words simpler, the il- 
lustrations bite in better, and the people helped 


Human Side of Healing 149 


for the morrow’s task, he is surely likely to wear 
that nail-brush out at a lively rate, and then get 
another. 

He’s glad to do it for Jesus’ sake, and for the 
sake of the crowd, too, that needs help for the 
daily round. 

. If a Christian man finds that plunging his 

- head repeatedly into a deep bowl of cold water, 
doing it cautiously till he gets somewhat used 
to it, and being sure the hair is bone-dry after- 
ward, if he finds that that sends the excess of 
blood in his head elsewhere, where it is needed, 
and there’s a sense of refreshment, isn’t he likely 
to do it? Just because he’s a Christian? 

He’s an easier man to live with now. He 
makes a better father and husband, and worker 
and neighbour. He becomes a better Christian 
in his daily contacts. Surely anything that will 
help like that, he’ll do, for Christ’s sake. 

These are the six things suggested by those 
two old models of personal life, food, air, exer- 
cise, sleep, cleansing, and posture. They come 
under the head of obedience, the second of the 
two main things we are talking of just now. 


Nine Bodily Sins. 


Some of the commonest sins are not classed as 
sins at all. Yet they are sins against our bodies, 
and so against Him whose dwelling-place our 
bodies are. 

Here are the nine commonest sins against the 
body. Too much food and an unbalanced diet, 


150 About the Healing Christ 


lack of balanced exercise, breathing poisonous 
indoor air, lack of inner cleanliness, taking poi- 
sons into the body in the shape of stimulants, 
sedatives and drugs, tense nerves, overwork, 
wrong posture, and the use of the propagating 
organs otherwise than as intended by nature. 

These are responsible for by far the greatest 
number of diseases. Repentance here would re- 
sult in most physicians losing their practise. 
But there seems little need for the physicians to 
worry on this score. | 

And obedience, intelligent, thoughtful, sensi- 
ble obedience, to the requirements of our bodies 
would quite remove them. The exceptions are 
decidedly in the minority. 

Of course, overwork is one of the commonest 
sins among conscientious Christians. It may 
come through a lack of judgment. Most times 
it is, at root, evidence of a lack of faith in Christ, 
practically. 

There are no breakdowns in the path of obe- 
dience. But the path of service is strewn thick 
with saintly wrecks. 

The touchstone of the true life is, not the 
crowds and their need, not service, not suffering 
nor sacrifice. 

The touchstone is obedience, simple, clear, in- 
telligent, full obedience to the Holy Spirit’s 
plain leading. And when in doubt, wait. 

There’s a Lord to the harvest. There’s a 
Chief-of-staff. The ordering of strategy and 
tactics and movements is with Him. Our part 
is the quiet heart, the open ear, the trained dis- 


* 


Human Side of Healing 151 


eernment for His voice, His leading. And then 
doing as He leads, and only that. 

But, but, the thing to remember constantly is 
this. It is Christ’s will to forgive the truly 
penitent, and to heal their bodies. 

And He is at your side now eagerly waiting 
to do whatever is needed. 


VII 


GOD’S SCHOOL OF SUFFERING: CAN WE 
HASTEN GRADUATION DAY? 


It is Christ’s first will that we should be 
made pure in heart, intelligent in understand- 
ing the Father's will, with a passion for doing 
it, clean out of touch with everything that 
doesn’t help that way, in warm touch with 
our fellowmen, inflexibly set against every sort 
pes and always strong and healthful in 
ody. 


Guard Your Strong Points. 


I.XPERIENCE is the best teacher, and charges 
the biggest fee. It insists on being paid, day by 
day, as you go along. No book accounts al- 
lowed, nor eredits. 

You don’t pay in cheap stuff like gold and 
engraved paper and checks. No, you pay in 
blood and sweat. You pay in your own life 
given slowly out, sometimes painfully out, un- 
der tense pressure. 

But you get something. You get much. You 
get most. You get the one real thing, gold, real 
gold, the gold of character; you yourself, your 
changed self, that’s what you get. You’re never 
the same again. 

Experience means what you go through, and 
what goes through you. Our knowledge is really 
limited to just that. We know only what we go 
through. 


152 


God’s School of Suffering 158 


What is woven into the fabric of actual life, 
that we really know, and only that. The rest 
we only know about. And there’s a whole solar 
system of difference between the two. 

Bodily pain bends the most stubborn will. 
And that is saying a great deal. For there is 
nothing harder to bend than a stubborn will. 

The will is never broken. It can’t be. It can 
only be bent, and that means bent from within. 
No man’s will, however obstinate, can be bended, 
however slightly, except from within. That is 
to say, by his own choosing to bend it. 

Every man is an absolute sovereign in his 
will, from his mother’s breast until the breast 
of old mother-earth enfolds him at the last. This 
is the way God made him. 

But bodily pain, cutting, eating in, and then 
getting sharper-toothed, and persisting, tire- 
lessly persisting, day in and day out, by night 
and day, awake and asleep, and when you can’t 
sleep, that is the sorest pressure that can be 
brought to bear on a man’s will. It is the whip 
with the ugliest lash and sting. 

This explains much bodily pain, not all, but 
much. For there is nothing more mulishly stub- 
born, in earth or heaven or the depths below, 
than a stubborn human will. Perhaps you know 
that. And there is nothing so relentlessly per- 
sistent as bodily pain can be. It is a fierce con- 
flict, many a time. 

Often it is stubborn self-will and Love in 
fierce competition. The self-will refuses to bend 
even when it knows it should, that it’s right to, 


| 


154 About the Healing Christ 


and best to. For stubbornness can become a 
habit gripping a man beyond his own heart’s 
wish. 

And Love, with a breaking heart over the 
pain being suffered by that stubborn will, yet 
keeps the fire burning more fiercely, to save the 
man’s life. 

One can be strong enough to be stubborn, but 
not strong enough to bend. The will is really 
strongest when it uses its strength in bending 
to a higher, better, wiser, will. 

But Love wins out. The exceptions are rare. 
The heart, after all, wins in competition with 
the will. It kindles gentle fierce fires under the 
will, and keeps them burning, tender and 
hot, till the will yields, mellows, bends, eapitu- 
lates. 

The one thing greater than a stubborn will is 
a true, tender, hot heart. Love wins. This is 
the great lesson in God’s School of Suffering. 

A man’s strong point is apt to become his 
weak point, when he’s out of full touch with 
God. A man may come to have the possible 
weakness of his strongest qualities. Away from 
the steadying touch of God’s presence the pendu- 
lum swings clear to the opposite limit. Abraham 
was called a friend of God because he believed 
Him. His faith in God staggered not at the 
humanly impossible. Yet he quite failed God, 
twice, in going to Egypt and so imperilling 
God’s world plan; and in the Hagar incident. 

Moses was the meekest man, and no one ever 
lost his temper so badly and completely. David 


God’s School of Suffering 155 


was one of the saintliest of men, and no man 
has given more opportunity to men to revile be- 
eause of that ugliest moral blot in his life. 

Solomon was the wisest man, at the beginning. 
_ He became the stupidest moral fool, and so con- 
tinued to the end. 

Elijah’s boldness and daring made a record, 
yet he ran away with cowardly swiftness from 
a woman’s threat. 

Job was esteemed the most patient of men, 


. but was there ever a greater exhibition of hot, 


intolerant impatience than in his replies to his 
critics? He was the humblest of saints, and 
quite unconsciously showed how proud a man 
could be. 

One should keep a keen eye on his strong 
points. And the eyesight is keenest here when 
the knees are bent. 

There is simply no telling what may. happen 
to any of us when we lose full touch with Christ. 
The Spirit of God is man’s native air. Away 
from that he certainly gets into bad shape, and 
does the queerest unlikeliest things. 

Man is free, utterly free, in his will. That’s 
God’s tenderest touch. In that he is most like 
God. He becomes a slave, a rank slave, shackled 
and chained, fo his will. It’s a bit of the ugly 
trail of sin, the getting out of touch with God. 

It’s Christ’s first will that we should be strong 
and well in body. But what a time of it He 
has getting His first will done. 

Some of the saintliest of people, so lovable and 
gentle personally, have such stubborn wills. Let 


156 About the Healing Christ 


us hope it can be said truly that it is quite wn-— 
consciously that they won’t yield their will to 
God’s, in some cherished particular. 

We all seem to be a bit set In our own way. 
Some saintly folk are so sure they know better 
than God, in certain things. 

One tries hard to believe it is always an un- 
intentional stubbornness. Maybe putting it so 
baldly will help the truth break in through that 
same saintly stubbornness. 

And so there has to be a term of school. Many 
a dear saint supplies the scholar and the en- 
trance conditions for the school of suffering. 

And the discipline seems stiff and stern. And 
the fees are very high. And they are payable 
daily, and collected too. And the lessons seem 
hard and the time long. 

But then Love is always the schoolmaster, real 
Love, tender and true, honest and courageous, 
uncompromisingly insistent on the highest ideals. 

One hand tenderly and patiently is under- 
neath strengthening and sustaining, while the 
other guides and steadies, limits and lessens, the 
discipline when possible. And the Schoolmas- 
ter’s eye watches the calendar hoping for an 
early graduation. And His heart watches with 
deepest concern the scholar, who alone fixes the 
graduation date, 

We learn best by stories and pictures. The 
story is the picture for the ear. The picture is 
the story for the eye. We learn most through 
the eye, with the ear a close second. 

There are three stories in this solitary old 


God’s School of Suffering 157 


Book of God, pictured stories with the warm, 
vivid colouring of real human life, that come in 
here. 

There’s Job at one end, Paul at the other, and 
Jacob in between. Any one of them is quite 
enough to tell the story of Love’s schooling, all 
three together pile things up to the irresistible 
point. 


Job the Scholar. 


There’s an unusual fascination about the Job 
story. It is told so fully, and made so vivid, and 
is so human. It is the first of all these books to 
be written down. It is put at the gateway into 
this old Book of God. 

There is purpose in all this. For it deals with 
the sorest question of human life through the 
ages, the problem of suffering. Here, simply 
told, put into men’s hands at once, is God’s own 
answer to the problem. And it proves an an- 
swer that answers. It is full and adequate. 

It is striking that there are two parts to the 
story. The first has caught the eye of the 
Church; the second part has been strangely 
slighted, indeed ignored. 

Yet the story is not complete, and the answer 
not understood, unless and until both parts are 
taken together. It is one story. 

There are six chapters in the story, all told. 
In part one there are five chapters. In part two 
there is just one chapter. 

But what a chapter this sixth, this last chap- 
ter, is. It fairly vibrates with bubbling-over joy. 


158 About the Healing Christ 


Music and exuberant singing fill the air. “augh- | 
ter and congratulation, praise to God, and 
happy fellowship among men echo every- 
where. 

The sun is shining. The birds burst their 
throats with song. The very air is a-thrill with 
human gladness. And the music is now in the 
major key. The minor chording that swept and 
wept all through part one now becomes a blessed 
undertone to make the joyousness of the major 
stand out in bolder relief. 

How strange that the last bit of the Job story 
has been so ignored. The graduation day ex- 
ercises have been strangely pigeonholed out of 
sight. Did some one behind the scenes have a 
hand in that? 

Look a bit, briefly, at the six chapters of 
the Job story. Chapter one is the scholar in 
school. The picture is drawn as men saw him. 
It tells his common reputation in the whole 
countryside. He was perfect and upright in all’ 
his dealings with his fellows. 

There was more, he reverenced God, and ear- 
nestly sought to please Him. He was thought- 
fully and intelligently deliberate in this. 

When there had been a time of feasting and 
convivial enjoyment in the family he was ecare- 
ful to have a special time of prayer afterward, 
that if anything had been done or said displeas- | 
ing or not-pleasing to God it might be forgiven, 
and so no unsuspected root of wrong-doing be 
allowed. 

It was his conscientious habit to be pleasing 


God’s School of Suffering 159 


to God in the whole habit of his life. And he 
was careful to guard the life of his growing 
family. 

All this was commonly known. He was the 
leading citizen in the community. And this was 
his reputation. He was upright with others, a 
thoughtful father in his family, and saintly in 
his own personal life. 

His very name suggests his character. Names 
grew up in those days, up out of a man’s char- 
acter. Here the name given has a distinctly 
spirit significance. That would be natural with 
such a man, for his saintliness, his spiritual habit 
of character, was the outstanding trait. He was 
called Job, that is, the man hated, hounded, per- 
secuted to the utmost possible limit. 

His character made him hated. He was heart- 
ily disliked by those of the opposite ilk. Espe- 
cially he was hated by the unseen spirit prince 
of evil, whose personality in that early day was 
never questioned. 

This is the picture men saw, a man so con- 
scientious, so upright, so thoughtfully method- 
ically righteous and saintly as to arouse opposi- 
tion in some quarters. 

There’s another bit in the picture of the man 
that comes out later in the whole story. It was 
the side that God saw, the inside of his char- 
acter. 

He was so humble that, probably quite un- 
consciously, he was proud of it. There was a 
subtle unsuspected inner satisfaction with his 
spiritual attainments. 


160 About the Healing Christ 


What a strange bit of irony, pride in being 
humble! But a snake may crawl noiselessly 
through the greenest grass, and among the most 
fragrant flowers. 

He was so conscientious in planning the whole 
habit of his life as pleasing to God that he 
slipped a bit in the real thing. 

Without being aware of it that very con- 
scientiousness, and methodical care, and saint- 
liness of habit, got in to his inner subconscious-~ 
ness even more than God Himself. 

He would have been the first to pull himself 
up had he recognized the tendency. He was 
quick as a flash on his face when God actually 
spoke to him, and things got straightened out. 

But that’s the man, the scholar in the school, 
the two men in one, the man his neighbours saw, 
and the man God saw. 

That’s chapter one. Men saw a humble 
godly man. God saw a bit of dross in the rare 
fine gold of this man’s character. 


Job—First Session of School. 


Chapter two is the first session of school. In 
the upper spirit realm there’s a reviewing of 
things down on the earth. 

Satan is spoken of for the first time in the 
Seriptures, and spoken of by that name, the 
Satan, the accuser, the hater, the hounder of 
men, 

God takes the initiative regarding Job. This 


1 Job 1: 1-5. 


God’s School of Suffering 161 


is significant. There’s a purpose at work. God 
speaks of the well-known character of Job. 

Satan maliciously slanders Job as an utterly 
selfish man who finds it to his advantage to be 
righteous. Satan is given permission to inter- 
fere in Job’s affairs, but within strict limita- 
tion.’ 

Then the scene of the story shifts to the earth 
again. Job’s opportunity has come. The door 
up-stairs is to open at his feet. 

War, marauding bands, lightning, a terrific 
wind-storm, these come one after the other with 
a rush, And everything is swept away, children 
and possessions one after another in quick suc- 
cession. 

And there is a terribly dramatic piling up of 
the calamities as the story is told, by one breath- 
less messenger after another, to Job. 

And in this sore hour of bereavement, with 
torn and bleeding heart, Job never flinched in 
his simple trust in God, and his unfailing per- 
sonal devotion to Him. Things have gone aw- 
fully bad. But there’s no reproach in Job’s 
heart. 

It is significant that the immediate origin of 
his trouble is quite unrecognized. He supposes 
that it is God Himself in action doing all this.’ 
It gives emphasis to his humble, uncomplaining 
submission to God, though he can’t understand 
why such things should happen to him. 

Again the scene shifts to the upper realm, and 


Job 1:6-12. 
? Job 1: 21. 


162 About the Healing Christ 


again God speaks of the righteousness of Job, 
though so sorely tried. And again Satan slan- 
ders and imputes selfish motives. And now the 
restriction on Job’s person is withdrawn, within 
a strict limit.’ 

Then comes the touch on Job’s person. One 
of the worst plagues known in that sub-tropical 
climate, uleerous sores, known as the black 
leprosy of Egypt, this breaks out in Job’s body. 
God’s gracious protecting restraint is partially 
withdrawn, for a brief time. 

And poor saintly Job, sitting on an ash heap, 
scraping his itching sores with the sharp edge 
of a broken piece of crockery, quite takes hold 
of one’s heart. 

Then his wife loses heart, and incoherently, 
bitterly cries out against God. And that doesn’t 
make things any better certainly. It’s a bitter 
draft to swallow when a man doesn’t feel his 
wife by his side, close up, steadying and be- 
lieving in him. 

His wife’s unfailing touch and presence and 
atmosphere strengthens a man quite beyond 
words. Its absence is felt keenly now, even 
though the answering voice is still quiet and 
steady. 

Then the three neighbours come. They are 
supposed to be comforters, deeply grieved over 
their old neighbour’s sore plight. For seven si- 
lent days and seven yet more silent nights they 
sit looking. 


* Job 2: 1-6. * Job 2: 7-13. 


God’s School of Suffering 163 


Peering aslant and direct, at Job and at each 
other, with never a word spoken, but many a 
thought thought, they sit. 

That was the decisive stroke. Job broke un- 
der that. His keen ear heard their unspoken 
thoughts. His sensitive spirit felt the cutting 
edge of those peering eyes. 

. Loss of property, loss of children, loss of 
health, loss of his wife’s sympathetic fellowship, 
he stood up under these. 

But, loss of his sacred privacy, and then the 
eriticism all the keener and more cutting be- 
cause unspoken, and all this continued unbroken 
seven full days and seven sleepless nights, that 
was a terrific climax. Job broke under that. 
Little wonder! 

The time test is the hardest test. The patience 
of patient Job ran out. He was a cunning 
strategist that planned that campaign, devilishly, 
cruelly, heartlessly cunning. This is chapter 
two, the first session in school. 


Job—Inside. 


Then comes chapter three, the unsuspected 
man inside is revealed.” ‘‘ After this,’’ this 
sevenfold cunningly piled-up climax of attack, 
Job ‘‘eursed his day.’’ 

That is, tacitly, quite unintentionally in all 
probability, he cursed God who gave the creative 
touch that day of birth. 

And for bitterness of spirit, biting sarcasm, 
persistent absorption in his own integrity and in 


* Job 3: I-31: 40. 


164 About the Healing Christ 


the unfairness of all that’s happening to him, 
for rebellion against God and God’s dealings, it 
would be difficult to match Job in the flood of 
talk that is now loosened out. 

How pain itself, with no touch of grace al- 
lowed in, sharpens the tongue, makes picturesque 
rhetoric, and puts acid in the spittle! It’s im- 
mensely suggestive. 

The three critics, called comforters, go at him 
in turn. And the burden of their talk is this: 
all these calamities mean that God is acting in 
judgment on Job for his wickedness. 

They insist that all his godliness is a mere 
sham to cover up the utter selfishness and actual 
wickedness underneath. Their talk hangs well 
together. There’s thorough consistency. 

It is full of pious phraseology, inaccuracies, 
half truths, and positive untruths. It’s a queer 
tangle and mixture. It has a strangely familiar 
modern sound. 

It is not difficult to understand who sent them, 
or which side they represent in this pathetic 
conflict going on, on the battlefield of Job’s life. 

It’s the last stroke of that carefully planned 
attack. One should be careful with quotations 
from the Book of Job, to note whose words are 
being quoted. 

But Job out-talks them. As the debate goes 
on their talks get shorter, his longer. He talks 
nine times, all three of them eight times. He 
says half as much more as they. 

His bitterness increases. At last they quit. 
They are talked out. The case is hopeless to 


on, eel 


God’s School of Suffermg 165 


them because this man Job is so set in believing 
in his own righteousness. They give Job up as 
a hopeless incorrigible. 

This is the first session of the school. The 
examinations show Job up in rather bad shape. 
Job lays himself bare. He is indeed a rare saint 


_ in the utter integrity of his heart and life. 


But he doesn’t understand. He is in the dark. 
And he blunders badly. That’s why the story 
is put down here, so his spirit kinsfolk need not 
make the same blunders. 

Job questioned God’s love, which is always 
above question or suspicion. Because he doesn’t 
understand he questions God’s love, which means 
he doubts it. 

And in the sore experience, certain unsus- 
pected things that were inside came out. They 
must have been in or they couldn’t have come 
out. As you see them coming out you know 
that, all unsuspected, they were hidden away in- 
side. 

It’s a strange sight indeed this. Saintly Job, 
rarest of saints in the purpose of his heart, and 
the uprightness of his conduct, unconsciously 
letting the seamy side stick out, 

Sitting on the ash heap, talking, with the 
sharp-edged bit of broken crockery in rhythmic 
motion on his itching scabs, declaring his own 
righteousness, and reviling God and God’s deal- 
ings. Cutting sarcastic flings intermingle with 
msistence on his faith in God. 

The examinations go hard with Job. They 
show up something inside never suspected. He 


166 | About the Healing Christ 


doesn’t see it yet. Job’s weakness is laid bare. 
His humility is the last thing in view now. In- 
deed it’s clear out of view, lost sight of. 

And where is the proverbial patience of pa- 
tient Job? All this rebelliousness of spirit 
against God, this biting, burning sarcasm, this 
utter absence of the love spirit, this utter de- 
pressed absorption in himself, this exaggerated 
ego, this had all been in, quite unsuspected. 
Else it couldn’t have gotten out. 

One begins to understand now about that 
school of suffering. The graduate, with honours, 
of many schools is having a final post-graduate 
course. God wants him up higher, highest, with 
full honours, but forgetting all about the hon- 
ours in thinking about his wondrous God. 

Now comes chapter four, God’s teacher comes. 
The second session of school opens. God takes a 
hand in things indirectly. He sends a mes- 
senger, Elihu. Elihu is a teacher. And what 
poor saintly righteous Job needed above all 
things just now was a teacher. 

His heart was all right, but his understanding 
of things was muddled. The teacher quietly, 
patiently, gently, plainly, teaches. Then Job’s 
eyes begin to open. New soft light begins to 
break in. 

First of all this teacher explains just why 
all this has happened to Job. He repudiates ut- 
terly what the three critics had been declaring 
so positively. 

God had not been acting in judgment on Job. 


* Job 32: 1-37: 24. 


God’s School of Suffering 167 


The whole thing is on a wholly higher level, a 
love level, a wooing level. 

Elhu points out that Job had been insisting 
on his own integrity. He was rebelling bitterly 
because of what had happened to him, and 
against God’s dealings with him, and so against 

God Himself." 

- Job had been proud of his sanctity, the utter 
uprightness of his conduct, and the sincerity of 
his heart. He had become absorbed with him- 
self, his saintliness. He was proud of being so 
humble, quite unconsciously.’ 

For pride is simply being taken up with your- 
self in any degree or any way, and not getting 
God in in His own place. 

Humility is simply letting God in to one’s 
thought and imagination and purpose as big as 
He really is. All we have is from God, a direct 
gift to be held in trust. 

Talents, gifts, powers, possessions, everything 
is given by Him. It is a trust in the full legal 
meaning of that word, and then the higher love 
meaning. 

All these gifts are at their best only as God’s 
touch is upon them in full, which means, is upon 
you in full. 

No one is true to himself, and to his powers, 
and to his neighbours, except as all is yielded up 
to God’s touch, full constant touch. 

And when that’s so the mind, the imagination, 
the will, are all absorbed with the thought of 


* Job 33: 8-12. 
* Job 33: 17. 


168 About the Healing Christ 


God Himself, His love so beyond words, and all 
that grows out of His love. 

Pride is the assertion of one’s self. Humility 
is being so taken up with some One else that 
one thinks of himself only in relation to that 
One. 

Then in a simple, practical, wholesome way 
all one’s powers, one’s relation to his fellows and 
to the day’s task, fall into right place. That’s 
the touch upon you of this One you’re so taken 
up with. 

That absorption in God, in Christ, is a very 
practical thing. You have seen a babe watch- 
ing intently the mother’s face, utterly absorbed, 
conscious of nothing else. And the sight has 
caught your heart. 

And so the mother with her babe, a lover with 
his lover, a husband with a wife. This thing of 
being absorbed in some one else is common 
enough to know about, blessedly so. 

Job was being wooed from absorption in him- 
self up to the higher level, forgetting himself 
in seeing God. If ever a man really sees God 
he loses himself at once. And yet he really gets 
hold of his true self in losing himself in God. 

Elihu gently but firmly puts his finger on the 
sore spot. Job had been taken up with himself. 
His whole trouble at root was pride, thinking 
about himself." That’s the teacher’s first point, 
tactfully, clearly made. 

Then the teacher goes on. Something hap- 
pens. Sickness comes. Elihu touches only one 


* Job 33: 13-18. 


God’s School of Suffering 169 


thing in Job’s troubles. But that is enough, 
and makes things simpler to Job’s understand- 
ing. 

Elihu doesn’t go into the matter of the process 
by which the disease came to Job, just now, as 
is told in the beginning of Job’s story. There’s 
a vivid description of a desperately sick man.’ 
’ That’s the teacher’s second bit. 

Then comes a teacher to make things clear to 
this sick man.” Elihu modestly speaks of him- 
self only indirectly. A paraphrase helps make 
the thought clearer, a translation into simple 
English of the underneath thought. 

Elihu says, ‘‘If there be with the sick man a 
messenger, a teacher, one in the close, confidential 
touch of personal love, to explain things to him 
patiently and gently and clearly ;—’’ 

Then comes prayer, and the healing.” Now 
the healed man frankly says, ‘‘I have sinned.’’ 
There’s a vast difference between being told you 
are a sinner and actually confessing yourself 
that you are a sinner. 

Now, healed, the man goes about singing. He 
is so absorbed with such a wondrous God as he 
has found all anew that he goes about telling 
his neighbours and friends about Him. 

This is the heart of Elihu’s teaching. There 
are six links in its chain, pride, disease, a teacher, 
prayer, healing, telling others about this won- 
drous God. 


*Job 33: 19-22. 
* Job 33: 23. 
* Job 33: 24-28. 


170 About the Healing Christ 


And the rest of Elihu’s talk, by far the greater 
part, is taken up chiefly in talking about God. 
Unconsciously he becomes a fine illustration of 
what he is talking about. 

I can imagine that already a bit of restful 
sigh escapes Job’s lips. His thought is sharply 
changed. What fine psychology! He turns 
away from himself (what a relief!) to—@od,’ 
That’s the close of the second session of school. 


Job Sees God. 


Then the third session opens. This is the 
fifth chapter of the story, Job gets a sight of 
God.’ God speaks. Job hears, and gets down 
on his face at once. God picks up the thread 
where Elihu had dropped it, and goes on weav- 
ing the same fabric. 

And what God does is this, simply this, but 
all of this: He looks into Job’s face. Job never 
forgot the sight. God talks in a very simple, 
homely way about Himself. 

Job gets a picture of God, the Creator, His in- 
telligence that could think things out, His wis- 
dom that could so skilfully adapt means to end, 
His power that could actually do what He did; 
and then above all, running through all and be- 
tween the lines is this: His love; He did it, ac- 
tually did what He did. 

Job got a picture of God. He never got over 
it. He’s down on his face in the dust. It’s a 


*Job chapters 34-37. 
* Job chapters 38-41. 


God’s School of Suffering 171 


remarkable face-about. ‘‘Mine eye seeth Thee: 
I abhor myself.’’* 

And then God graciously gives Job a rare 
opportunity. It is not a test to see if Job can 
stand it. It is Job’s opportunity to reveal the 
wholly new spirit now in control. It is his op- 
portunity to be like God. 

He is to pray for these poor befogged critics. 
They certainly need it. And he gladly does it. 
He is so taken up now with God that everything 
is affected. The absorbing thought of such a 
God comes swamping in. It takes possession. 
It graciously grips him. 

The bitter sarcasm toward these critics goes 
elean out. Love, that is to say, God, fills his 
heart. He is grateful for the outlet of this new 
passion. He gladly prays for these men that 
they, too, may see this wondrous God. 

The real God-touch means a humaner human- 
touch. Job is really humble now, but he doesn’t 
know it. He’s so absorbed with God that he 
quickly forgives and loves his bitter critics. Be- 
eause that’s being like God. That’s the God- 
touch. 

When a man thinks he is humble he may know 
at once that he isn’t. He’s thinking about him- 
self. When one thinks in his heart that he 
really is saintly, he may know for a truth that 
he isn’t. He hasn’t the real thing; for he’s 
taken up with himself. 

The real thing of humility is being absorbed 
with God. Then you become unconsciously like 


* Job 42: I-09. 


172 About the Healing Christ 


Him. It becomes a passion, an intensely prac- 
tical passion, to get others in touch, too. That’s 
the God-touch. 

Humility is such a sensitive plant, when you 
think you have it it withers up at once, and dies. 
This is the third session of school. Job sees God, 
and gets down on his face, and then reaches out 
to help others. 

Then comes chapter six, Graduation Day. 
School’s out. Satan is heard of no more. He 
has slunk away. Resisted, he fled. The healing 
touch comes without being asked for. And it’s 
a full healing. It includes body and family and 
circumstances and length of life. 

And the striking thing that catches you at 
once is this: Job fixed the date for graduation 
day. The whole decision rested with him. His 
will had new strength now. It could bend, bend 
to the higher will. 

And it did. That was the turning point. 
That fixed the date. All God’s power and love 
wait on man’s consent. We control the door 
through which God enters our lives. 

How long did this school of suffering last? 
There were three sessions, then graduation day. 
But how much time did the whole take? 

I don’t know in actual days and weeks. It 
doesn’t tell. But the story as told gives the im- 
pression that the whole thing could have oc- 
curred within a few weeks, from new moon to 
full. 

How long did this school last? I do know. I 


“Job 42: 10-17. 


God’s School of Suffering 178 


know exactly. Just as long as it took Job to get 
down on his face; then graduation day. 

Job could have made it last much longer. 
Any one can. Some are strong enough to talk 
humbly about themselves, and submissively. 
But they’re not strong enough to bend, bend 
clear down. 

You’ve got to get clear down to see God’s 
face, and hear His voice. The best view of God 
is gotten on your face in the dust. Then the 
eyes of the spirit open. 

And even the ash heap, and that broken piece 
of crockery, become fragrant memories. For 
they became the gateway into that blessed change 
of spirit. And through that the healing and all 
the rest came. 

School fees were never so high. Ask Job. And 
payment of fees was never more cheerfully as- 
sented to, afterward, when school was out. 

One is quick to note that there is a twofold 
purpose in this old Job school-story. There was 
a purpose for Job himself. 

And there was a purpose through Job. Job 
has been a silent eloquent preacher to men ever 
since his story was lived in the plains and hills 
of Uz. 

There was a distinct purpose of service in 
Job’s experience. The whole Church, and some 
day the whole race, will be grateful to Job for 
being a good scholar in God’s school. 


Paul’s Thorn—The Man. 
The second of these outstanding picture- 


174 About the Healing Christ 


stories is that of Paul, Paul’s thorn. Whenever 
one talks rather positively about prayer, or 
about bodily healing, some one always remem- 
bers and asks about Paul’s thorn. Well, there 
certainly is distinct help for us all here. 

First a look at the man, then a look at his 
thorn. The best light on this troublesome thorn 
is the man. He, his character, and the great 
bit of work for God he was chosen to do, these 
throw the best light on that stinging, sticking 
thorn. 

Paul is a great man from any point of view, 
and a great saint. His Hebrew blood, his aris- 
tocratic family and breeding, his inherited and 
acquired culture, 

His university training, his breadth of out- 
look, his inflexible conscientiousness, his passion 
of devotion to his Master, what a man he was 
among men! What a saint among saints! 

What a giant he was in his will. The un- 
flinching unfaltering insistence on his task, in 
spite of opposition and difficulties, all those ardu- 
ous journeys in the thick of hardships of every 
imaginable sort up to the limit of endurance, 
these all tell what a giant he was in his will. 

But, speak softly, his strong will sometimes held 
the lines too tight. A man’s weak point is pretty 
apt to be the swing-away of the pendulum on his 
strong point. Paul had the possible weakness of 
his strongest qualities. He was a bit set in his 
way. 

Say it very softly, for we are talking about 
dear old saintly Saint Paul. Say it yet more 


God’s School of Suffering 175 


softly, for where one speaks of one weak spot 
in him he quickly calls to mind a half-dozen in 
himself. Yet say it distinctly, to help. 

God had a hard time getting Paul to go His 
way. God found it difficult sometimes to get 
Paul to fit into His plans. Paul had a plan or 
two of his own. Perhaps just one or two of us 
‘may have heard of such a thing before. 

From the time of that never-to-be-forgotten 
experience on the Damascus road, with the light, 
and the voice, and the overwhelming sense of 
power, Paul knew that his errand was to the 
outer non-Jewish world. 

The nations of the earth, the Gentiles, this 
was to be his field of service. The very magni- 
tude of it must have appealed to the imagination 
of this giant and saint. 

But, from the first, he had an intense desire 
to go to the Jerusalem Jews. He felt he could 
get them. 

It was a perfectly natural thing, for Paul had 
been so closely associated. with them. And his 
very sense of strategy in action suggested and 
emphasized it. 

He felt in his bones, ‘‘I know them. I trained 
with that group. I know how to take them. Let 
me at them. If once we can get them it will 
mean so much. 

‘‘Tt’s the strategic thing. They crucified 
Jesus. They stoned the Holy Spirit, in effect, in 
stoning Stephen. But, but, let me at them.”’ 
This was deep down in his spirit. 

Indeed the thing went rather far. Early in 


176 About the Healing Christ 


his Christian life Christ had given Paul a spe- 
cial vision about this very matter when Paul 
was praying in the sacred precincts of the temple 
in Jerusalem.’ 

And the Lord gave him specific directions to 
get out of Jerusalem, out to the outer non-Jewish 
world. The Jerusalem leaders were incorrigibly 
set in their stubborn rejection, he was told. 

Then a strange thing happened, passing 
strange. Paul actually begins to argue with the 
Lord why he was specially qualified for a Jewish 
mission ! 

This was surely taking things to great length, 
the soldier under orders arguing with the chief- 
of-staff why he should not do as he was bid, but 
something else he preferred! Did dear saintly 
Paul’s intensity blur his thinking? 

Yet it seems to me, yes, I can recall something 
of that sort in modern times, and among saintly 
folk, too. And the temple interview closes with 
a clear positive command—‘‘ Depart; for I will 
send thee far hence (from Jerusalem) to the 
outer non-Jewish peoples.’’ 

And Paul went. With all his splendid powers 
and devotion he went. But he never lost that 
early inner passionate longing. He insisted 
upon it, years after, against distinct intimations 
of the Holy Spirit in line with that temple inter- 
view.” 

His insistence changed the whole latter part 
of his outstanding career. That’s a little look-in 


* Acts 22: 17-21. 
* Acts 21:4, with references. 


God’s School of Suffering 177 


at this rare saintly giant of God. It explains 
the thorn that came, and was not taken away. 


Paul’s Thorn—Healing While Not Healed. 


Now, about the thorn.* There came some seri- 
ous ailment in his body. No one knows what it 
was. The long learned discussions are so much 
’ waste breath, when time is so precious and real 
things so pressing, too. 

It doesn’t matter a grot what it was. It was 
there, and it stayed. It interfered. It hurt 
keenly. 

Paul didn’t think so much of it, at first. There 
was Christ to go to. He would go and ask for 
healing. And the healing touch would come, he 
felt quite sure. 

All Paul’s experience would lead him to ex- 
pect the healing touch. He had that remark- 
able two years’ campaign in Ephesus, where heal- 
ings to a quite unusual degree were the out- 
standing feature.’ 

Earlier there had been the man crippled from 
birth, never able to walk, now leaping and walk- 
ing through Christ’s touch, at the word of Paul.’ 

There is the yet more remarkable bit, toward 
the latter part, of the young man at Troas on 
the Afgean, actually brought back from the 
dead. 

And Paul had taught healing. It was part of 
his group of teachings to the churches wherever 

*2 Corinthians 12: 7—I0. 


? Acts 19: 10-12. 
® Acts 14: 8-I0. 


178 About the Healing Christ 


he went. He himself had known the healing 
touch. 

He had the best of reason for expecting heal- 
ing now. Indeed he seems not to have doubted 
that the healing touch would come, But it 
didn’t. 

Again he prays specifically for healing. Still 
there is no change. The thorn stayed. Its 
needle-point gets sharper, and sticks persistently 
in. Ugh! how it hurt! A third time Paul goes 
to his knees, how earnestly and intensely some of 
us can understand. 

Now, please notice keenly, there’s an answer 
to his prayers. There are three items in the 
answer. First of all, the man is answered 
though the petition is denied. Paul is not 
ignored. His prayer is heard. Christ never 
ignores any one, nor fails to hear any honest 
prayer. 

The second thing to note is just what Christ 
said in His answer. I can see dear saintly old 
Paul one night all alone with his thorn. The 
day’s work is done, the stitching of tent-canvas, 
and talking to the crowds, and to the two’s and 
three’s. 

He is tired. He has gone to bed. He would 
sleep but for that thorn. He turns and twists, 
and longs for the sleep that doesn’t come. And 
he wonders why the healing touch hasn’t come. 
He is just a bit perplexed, maybe a bit depressed. 

Then, quietly, very quietly, a voice comes, an 
inner voice, quiet as Hermon’s dew, clear as the 
tone of a bell. 


God’s School of Suffering 179 


And the voice said, ‘‘ Paul, I know about that 
thorn, and how it hurts. It hurts me, too. It 
hurts me because it hurts you. 

‘‘But, Paul,’’ the voice goes quietly steadily 
on, ‘‘ it’s a bit better to let the thorn stay, be- 
cause, only so can I have the use of you, the full 
free use of you, in My plans for the world I 
gave My life’s blood for.’’ 

And a hush comes over the dear man’s spirit. 
There comes with the voice a look within. In- 
stinctively Paul begins to understand better. A 
soft clear light breaks. 

He knows, at once, yet better, how true is the 
word being so gently spoken. He knows that 
the diagnosis is accurate. And he lies quiet, with 
a great deep hush in his inner spirit. That’s the 
second bit of the answer. 

Then the voice comes again. When the pause 
has deepened the impression, more comes. The 
voice goes on in yet quieter gentler lingering 
tones, 

‘** Paul, I’ll be so near you, you will have such 
a sense of My presence, that you’ll forget the 
thorn even while you feel it cutting in.”’ 

Years after I can see the blessed old service- 
scarred saint in his own hired house in Rome. 
It’s rather late at night. 

The crowds have been thronging the house, 
erowds from all over the world, in this great 
world centre, Rome. An Egyptian had sat over 
there, and a dark-skinned Ethiopian yonder. 

A cultured-faced man from the Euphrates, 
and a fair-skinned Caucasian had’ been standing 


180 About the Healing Christ 


in the corner side by side. Keen-eyed Greeks, 
vigorous Latins, alert courtly Spaniards, the eul- 
tured and the scholarly, the unlettered and the 
simple folks, gently jostled each other. 

They had crowded in, listening so intently, 
and questioning so eagerly. And the unseen 
Presence had been so real. And Paul’s heart 
was all aglow as with a pressure of the hand 
they had slipped out into the night. Now, they 
have all gone. Once again the burning Christ 
message has gone out to the whole world. 

Paul is sitting quietly, slowing down inside 
before seeking bed and sleep. One arm is around 
young Timothy, not quite so young now. The 
other hand is laid caressingly upon dear faithful 
Doctor Luke’s arm. 

They’re talking in subdued tones. And as 
you listen in you hear Paul say, ‘‘Do you know, 
dear old friends, I wouldn’t have missed the 
thorn for the presence ——”’ 

And the sentence breaks off. A bit of hoarse- 
ness, the hoarseness of deep emotion, thickens 
his voice. And the look of deep reverence and 
love mingled deepens in his companions’ faces. 

Then he goes quietly on, ‘‘—the presence, the 
wondrous glory-presence of Jesus, beyond words, 
that has been with me through it all.’’ 

And the clearer light breaks on his listeners. 
The inner understanding deepens. <A great si- 
lence falls on them. They know they’re at the 
deep springs. 

They are being allowed to see a bit into the 
Lord’s passion for His world, and the place this 


God’s School of Suffering 181 


grayed veteran is having in it. The emergency 
of sin has gripped both, the unseen One and 
this man so great in his suffering and in his 
service. 

Yet, yet, there’s a bit to add. I am clear, and 
I grow yet clearer, that our Lord Jesus still 
prefers to take the thorn away. And He will 2f 
He may have His way, His first way. 

Graduation day comes later to Paul. It came 
one day just outside that city, with an escort 
of imperial Roman soldiers. Yet, very softly, 
and still very distinctly, let the words be spoken, 
it might have come sooner. 

But in the mix-up of a strong human will, not 
unlike other wills we know, and a world in the 
sore emergency of sin’s havoc, and the great 
passion of the Heart that broke once, things 
were as they were. 

There’s something yet farther to note here of 
much significance. Without any question Paul 
was repeatedly conscious, indeed continuously 
conscious of Christ’s healing touch on his body 
through all this rare difficult experience. 

As one reads the whole story through the fact 
is plainly borne in that Christ’s healing touch, 
in protection, in strengthening, and in actual 
healing, was with Paul through all those thorn 
years. 

It is difficult, if not impossible, to fit in chron- 
ologically the beginning of this distressing ail- 
ment. But one remembers that Paul had been 
left for dead just outside Lystra in Asia Minor. 
And the intense hatred of those Antioch Jews 


182 About the Healing Christ 


would make them do a thorough job of stoning. 
Their efficiency is beyond question. 

Yet Paul gets up, rests over night, and pushes 
on the next day. He carried out the itinerary 
as planned, apparently. That would be an out- 
standing instance of healing under most extreme 
circumstances. 

And no one can read Paul’s own long remark- 
able list of the experiences he went through 
without a deep impression of Christ’s direct 
touch on his body throughout. 

Listen, and think into, not merely the bodily 
suffering involved, but the tremendous natural 
breakdown of bodily strength. Five times he 
had been whipped on his bare back with forty- 
stripes-save-one, 

And three times with the yet more severe 
Roman rods save none, once stoned, three times 
shipwrecked, a night and a day drifting ex- 
posed out in the open sea, 

The acute hardship of the crude, typical 
traveling of that time and of the Orient, perils 
of swollen rivers, of robbers not hesitating to 
use violence, of hunger and thirst, cold and in- 
sufficient clothing. 

Think slowly into that list. Clearly enough 
the experience with the thorn was the more strik- 
‘ing to Paul because in the midst of Christ’s con- 
stant healing touch upon Paul’s body. 

Paul experienced the threefold healing, the 
continual protecting restraint upon disease, the 
strengthening of bodily functions, and the di- 
rect positive healing. Else he could never have 


God’s School of Suffering 183 


gone through what he did. The thorn was the 
more marked as an exception in the midst of 
such experiences. 

The thing that stands out biggest in the whole 
story here is this: it was for service’ sake that 
this thorn experience was allowed. 

It was for the sake of a race of men, swamped 
by the terrific emergency of sin, and in the 
scarcity of men at hand available, that the thing 
occurred. 

It was distinctly exceptional. Had it been 
merely Paul personally that was concerned the 
whole trend of Christ’s dealing makes clear that 
this ailment would have gone like the others. 
But service controlled. The world’s emergency 


gripped. 
Jacob’s Limp. 


There’s one more of these pictures in this rare 
old gallery of honest portraits, the picture of 
Jacob at Jabbok.’ 

In that strange night struggle between the 
sturdy Hebrew herdsman and an unrecognized 
Assailant, Jacob fully holds his own. Then to- 
ward dawn the strange Assailant does a strange 
thing. 

Jacob is startled to feel a slight touch on the 
inner side of his thigh, and at once the thigh 
bone goes out of joint. 

Instantly Jacob knows that this is no mere 
man. No man could have done that. And two 
things at least crowd in faster than he can think. 


*Genesis 32: 24-32. 


184 About the Healing Christ 


His power as a wrestler is clean gone, at once. 
His native shrewdness makes him think of that. 
But, far deeper, comes the recognition of who 
this unrecognized Stranger of the dark is. 

He’s been fighting against God! And then, 
all these years he had been fighting against God! 
and against God’s plans for his life! Uncon- 
sciously fighting? Half consciously fighting? 

At least this much ean be said for Jacob, not 
recognizing how much it meant that he had been 
insistently stubbornly fighting against God, and 
God’s plan. (But then, is that so unusual? 
and among good people?) 

It’s the one instance in Scripture of God’s 
own direct touch on a man’s body, injuring, 
laming him. And mark keenly that it was not 
a disease. 

It was a slowing down of the man’s gait. He 
had been so sure of himself. Now he must go 
through life halting, limping. 

Well, there’s a purpose under this exceptional 
act of God’s. There’s always a purpose where 
He is concerned. And it is always a purpose of 
love. 

This man Jacob was hindering, actually hold- 
ing back, and threatening to block completely, 
God’s world plan. It wasn’t merely Jacob’s own 
life that was concerned. God’s plan for the race 
hinges on this man. 

A man may hinder or break God’s plan for 
his own life, if he will. All God’s plans wait on 
our consent. The sovereign God waits on the 
sovereignty of man’s choice. 


God’s School of Suffering 185 


But no man can break God’s broad plan for 
the world. He may slow it up. He does that so 
much. God’s sovereignty simply means that, 
ultimately, through the intricate network of hu- 
man wills, His great plan will work out, and 
always in some way through man’s choice, 
freely given. 

Even now, Jacob could have balked still fur- 
ther. It wasn’t merely the touch of power on 
his thigh that won. It was that, plus something 
more, far deeper and tenderer, the touch of love 
upon his heart. 

Jacob could have fought against the power. 
But the love, the patient waiting, and putting 
up with his wayward conduct, all these long 
years, the gracious wooing, in so many 
ways ——! 

He could see it all now. It was this that bent 
his will at last, from within, to this strong, wait- 
ing, loving will of his great God. 

Note keenly, that this is a crisis. Most rever- 
ently it can be said it was God’s crisis. God’s 
plan was in danger. A world’s salvation hung 
in the balance, hung on this one man’s consent 
to be used, in God’s way, in God’s plan. 

It is a threefold crisis. It was a crisis of 
available material. Jacob was the son of Isaac, 
the grandson of Abraham, through whom the 
world plan must be worked out. 

He was the twin son, it is true. But the other, 
Esau, was plainly disqualified by temperament. 
Impulsive, hot-headed, wholly unreliable, bar- 
tering his most sacred possession for something 


186 About the Healing Christ 


to eat, as unstable as water, he was wholly un- 
fitted for leadership in carrying forward God’s 
plan. God was narrowed down to Jacob. 

Jacob was a cool, steady, calculating man of 
method and habit. He was a thinker and a hard 
worker. He was a man to do things. But he 
had the mean moral strain in him. He was in- 
tensely selfish. He was forever grasping, cun- 
ningly taking advantage of the other fellow. He 
was unscrupulous. He never hesitated at the 
most underhanded move to gain his point. 
Jacob was morally contemptible. 

But his failings were moral. Esau’s were 
mental. The moral could be changed by grace, 
if once Jacob’s consent could be gotteny 

It was not really that Jacob was the better 
man, he was the less-poor of the two. It was a 
crisis of available material. God needs the best. 
Jacob must be used, but first he must be changed. 
So the exceptional thing was done. 

It was a crisis of tyme. Long years Abraham 
and Sarah had been wooed, graciously wooed, 
patiently put up with. Isaae was the child of 
the changed Abraham and Sarah. He took on 
their later traits. 

And now, for many long years, a full quarter 
of a century at least, God had been calling Jacob 
up to the higher level. But Jacob’s firmness 
and strength teetered over into stubbornness. He 
gets more set. 

And he grows more stubborn, more uglily ob- 
stinate, more set than ever. Time pressed. It 
grew less. The stubbornness grew more, and 


God’s School of Suffering 187 


then yet more. In a crisis of time God did the 
exceptional thing. 

It was a world crisis. God’s plan concerned 
a world. A Babel, a Flood, a Sodom-and-Go- 
morrah, tremendous moral catastrophes, these 
told plainly the moral outcome threatening. 

Through Jacob and Jacob’s line was to come 
the little messenger-nation, the Saviour-nation, 
the Saviour Himself. All unknown, unsuspected 
by any but God, it was the world crisis. For 
the sake of the race, to save His great plan for 
saving a world, God did the exceptional thing. 

And, so, by the fords of the Jabbok, under 
that gentle touch of supernatural power, at the 
break of a new day, Jacob surrendered his proud 
stubborn will. 

The touch on Jacob’s thigh was meant for his 
heart, like the later touch on the disciples’ feet. 
Jacob felt it there. His heart broke. He had 
actually been fighting God! He never really 
meant that. 

That heart-breaking touch on the thigh 
reached into the will, the citadel. The will bent. 
With all its disciplined strength it bent, and 
bent clean over. 

He quit wrestling. He had to. The disabled 
thigh settled the wrestling. He took to cling- 
ing. And he became the prince, the Israel, 
prince with God, pleading for forgiveness and 
blessing, and prevailing. 

And God yielded to that penitent clinging 
plea. God had saved two, the man and the 
world-plan. So only could it be. The world- 


188 About the Healing Christ 


plan was saved through the man. No one ever 
knows how much hangs on his saying ‘‘yes’’ to 
God. 

Jacob learned to walk with God, by limping. 
God tried to get him to walk without the limp. 
He preferred that. He still does. 

Jacob got along faster now because he’s been 
slowed down. He never walked so fast in his 
life in the true path as now when he goes slowly 
limping, limping along in his body. 

One can well understand that God did what 
He did reluctantly. It was an emergency trans- 
action. And all the world is in an emergency 
just now. And God is still needing men. 

These are the three pictures in this old gal- 
lery, Job’s ulcerous boils and the ash heap 
schoolhouse, Paul’s needle-pointed thorn, and 
Jacob’s halting limp. 

These are three scholars in God’s school of 
suffering. Job graduated early. He learned 
quickly. It was an intense session but a short 
one, intensive school work. 

Paul’s graduation came later, as did Jacob’s. 
Have they had a reunion up there, these three, 
in the Teacher’s own presence, and praised Him 
out of full hearts? I think likely. But I am 
quite sure it pleases the Teacher most when we 
work for early graduation. 

One notes keenly that in each ease the man 
concerned was a leader. That makes a great 
difference. The Devil lays special siege to the 
leaders. Leaders need more schooling because 
they touch the lives of so many. 


God’s School of Suffering 189 


Yet no one lives to himself. None of us can 
tell what plan of service of Christ’s may centre 
in our glad consent to His personal plan for the 
life. 

In each case it was a crisis, the meeting place 
of dismal failure and glorious victory. And the 
-man was always the decisive factor. 

One recognizes crises best backwards. We are 
so much wiser, afterwards. If only we might be 
quick and true to obey, for Christ’s sake, before 
we know it may be a crisis for some one or some 
plan. 

For service’ sake, in a crisis, the leader may 
find things happening. Because so much is 
hinging, of which he is unaware. If, ah! yes, 7, 
one might only obey gladly and fully and 
quickly, what Christ asks, because He asks, re- 
gardless of all else. 


Keep Your Hand Out. 


And so there may be a waiting time. Bodily 
healing may be needed, desperately needed per- 
haps. And we may be in real touch of heart 
with Christ. And we may pray for the healing 
touch. And yet, it may not come. There may 
be a waiting time. 

If so, it means simply this: we’re needing 
some schooling. There’s some plan involved. 
And the thing is to be good scholars. Cultivate 
the keen inner ear and the quiet inner spirit, so 
we can hear the Teacher’s voice. For He is 
speaking. If we are still enough we’ll hear. 

But no one expects to stay in school all his 


190 About the Healing Christ 


days. We should look forward to a glad gradu- 
ation day. We should plan early graduation. 
Our hands should be stretched out, stretched ex- 
pectantly out, till they grasp what has been 
promised. 

I ean never forget my mother’s very brief 
paraphrase of that long verse in the Third of 
Malachi. The verse begins, you remember, 
‘‘bring ye the whole tithe 7n,’’ and it ends up 
with ‘‘I will pour’’ the blessing oué till you’ll 
be embarrassed for space. 

My mother’s brief paraphrase was this: Give 
all He asks; take all He promises. 

There is always an instinctive hesitancy to 
speak of one’s own personal experiences. They 
seem so sacred. The reluctance comes unbid- 
den. 

And yet, of course, nothing is so strong and 
convincing, if rightly understood, as actual per- 
sonal experience. And one is willing to over- 
come that natural reluctance if only some one 
may be helped a bit. 

Within recent years I went through a critical 
illness, happily not very prolonged. There was 
clearly a purpose in it. That has been made 
quite clear to my inner spirit. 

And that purpose was served. That is clear. 
And one remarkable thing was the distinet touch 
on the body all during that illness, and in con- 
valescence, overruling the natural course of 
things. 

I have experienced healing in serious matters 

* Malachi 3: 10. 


God’s School of Suffering 191 


through the use of means prayerfully used. 
Again, quite distinctly, without the use of means, 
Christ’s own healing touch has come when 
things were serious. 

And yet again, I have been quite clear that it 
has been Christ’s own healing touch, in most 
_ difficult circumstances, overcoming the means 
used, that brought the healing and health. 

And, I may add, that while I never have en- 
joyed better health and vigour than at present, 
and of late, I am being plainly led in my inner 
spirit to expect a healing touch beyond what has 
yet been experienced. 

I am still in school, God’s school. I have 
gotten through some of the rooms, but not all. 
My hand is stretched out day and night. And 
I have the sweet assurance that graduation day 
is coming very soon now. 

I heard a homely story of a New York City 
newsboy from the slums. He was in a batch of 
slum boys sent into the country for two weeks 
by the Fresh Air Fund. 

He found himself, at the end of the journey, 
in a large, comfortable farmhouse. A motherly 
woman received him cordially. When bedtime 
came she took him to a bedroom. 

And she talked to him, as she turned down 
the bed covers. This had been her own son’s 
room when he was a boy, she explained. She 
hoped he would enjoy a good sleep, and be down 
early in the morning, and so she bade him ‘‘ good- 
night.”’ . 

Morning came, and breakfast time, but the 


192 About the Healing Christ 


boy didn’t appear. She called up the stairs but 
there was no response. 

She went up-stairs, found the room door open, 
and looked in. But there was no boy to be seen. 
Where was the boy? 

Perplexed and wondering, her eye caught sight 
of a ragged shoe on the floor at the edge of the 
bed. Stooping down she saw the boy sound 
asleep on the floor under the bed. 

She called to him: ‘‘Time to get up, my boy, 
breakfast ready.’’ He came crawling out, rub- 
bing his eyes, ‘‘ Yes’m, yes’m.”’ 

And as she turned to leave she said quietly 
pointing to the bed, ‘‘Why didn’t you sleep in 
the bed? ”’ 

The boy turned a surprised look, following 
the line of her pointing finger, toward the bed. 
‘‘Bed!’’ he said simply. ‘‘Is that a bed?’’ 

He had never slept in a bed. A door-stoop, a 
box, a barrel, or the like, had been the only bed 
the boy had ever known. Ah! yes, there are 
hundreds of them in the heathen slum fringe 
of all our great cities. 

Are you sleeping under the bed, taking less 
than Christ has provided? 


Vill 


THE DEVIL’S HEALING: IMITATIONS 
AND COUNTERFEITS 


It is Christ's first will for us that we should 
be pure in heart, strong in purpose, quick and 
accurate in discerning evil under any disguise, 
poised and mature in judgment, gentle in our 
contacts, with an inner song ringing, content 
in circumstances, and healed of all our bodily 
ills and ailments, according to His Word, 
through glad surrender of habit and life to His 
Spirit's touch. 


The Devil—the Ape of God. 


Gop is love. The Devil is hate. Love is good, 
the best good there can be. Hate is bad, at the 
worst badness. 

The two are sworn enemies. The conflict is 
utterly irreconcilable. There can be no patched- 
up truce. It’s an advantage to get that fact 
clear. 

Neither side will yield. The Devil won’t give 
in. He is incorrigible. God can’t give in. His 
purity, His character, forbid. 

The warfare goes on ceaselessly, but—not in- 
terminably. There’ll be an end to it some day, 
a blessed end, for man. 

The earth is the battlefield. Man is the one 
being fought for. Man’s choice, freely given, 
is the one thing aimed at in the fighting. 

193 


194 About the Healing Christ 


God wants man’s love, that is, himself at his 
true native best. He wants his love freely, vol- 
untarily given. That’s really repetition. Love 
isn’t love unless it’s freely given. 

The Devil wants man’s worship, his submis- 
sion, abject, absolute submission, no matter how 
given or gotten. And he’s dead-set on getting it. 

The Devil is always on the heels of God to 
hurt man. Anything will be used that does that. 
Everything is used that promises that. Noth- 
ing is too base or foul, or too refined or cul- 
tured, for His reaching hand. 

The rarest scholarship and finest culture, the 
foulest sensuality and most heartless selfishness, 
each is used to the utmost. Anything to befool 
and befoul, to get twists and quirks, to lead away 
from that touch with God which is native to man 
as God made him. 

Nothing is too sacred for the Devil’s touch. 
Christian phraseology, scholastic philosophy, 
scientific research, are laid under tribute. The 
sweetest relationships and purest contacts of life 
are foully besmirched. 

And nothing is too foul if it’ll help out his 
incorrigible purpose. And no combination of 
the sacred and the foul is left untried and un- 
used. 

But, but, God is ever on the heels of the Devil 
to help. That’s why Christ came, and came as 
He came, and died as He did. Nothing God 
has is too precious to be freely given and sac- 
rificed if only man may be saved from the foul 
touch of the Devil. 


The Devil’s Healing 195 


The Devil is an imitator. He’s a skilled art- 
ful imitator. He never originates. But he has 
great ability as an imitator. 

One of the early Christian leaders called the 
Devil ‘‘the ape of God.’’ Imitation is the out- 
standing trait of both the ape and the Devil. 
But that was said long ago, long before the lead- 
ers’ visions had become so obscured. 

The Devil doesn’t hesitate to deceive. He is 
dishonest, as well as the father of all sorts of 
lies. He even slanders God. He doesn’t play 
fair. 

God is so honest. He is always so fair, even, 
even, be it said plainly, to His arch-enemy. And 
He knows well the outcome. 

The Devil is bold, devilishly bold, in his imi- 
tations and deceptions. He even imitates God! 
He steals phraseology from God’s Book. He 
copies God’s actions, that is, as nearly as he can. 

The expert instantly detects the imitation, the 
counterfeit, when put side by side with the 
genuine. But then the experts in this line are 
rather few and scarce. 

The one school started for teaching and train- 
ing eyes and ears and judgment in this sort of 
thing has been skilfully turned aside from its 
great task. 

The thing most lacking in Christian circles is 
teaching, simple, clear, poised teaching. Char- 
acteristically, the Christian groups are untaught 
and untrained. 

They are like shepherdless sheep, torn, dis- 
tressed, befooled, heading this way and that, and 


196 About the Healing Christ 


running into each other, rather violently some- 
times. It’s a marked feature of the spirit con- 
flict, Just now. 

The great steadying factor is that the out- 
eome is as assured as that Christ emptied that 
new-hewn tomb of rock, when its purpose had 
been served. 

Miracles appeal to the imagination as noth- 
ing else does. Any evidence or suggestion of 
supernatural power in action attracts the biggest 
crowds in the shortest. time. This has always 
been true, and is. 

It has always been popularly supposed that 
the supernatural is God at work. A miracle is 
commonly taken as evidence of divine power. 
This is a universal common notion or delusion, 
and has always been so. 

Of course, intelligent, thoughtful, Christian 
men know that this is not so. Archbishop 
Trench, the eminent Irish scholar and saint, 
speaks of this in his notable work on miracles. 

A miracle is not necessarily evidence of God’s 
work. It is evidence merely that some super- 
natural power is in action. 

Then the questions are: whose? what? There 
are two sources of supernatural power, God and 
the Devil. Of course, God’s power is absolute 
and limitless. 

The Devil is distinctly limited. His power is 
actually much less than sometimes supposed. 
Still there is a supernatural power there, how- 
ever limited. And he is very skilful in using 
and displaying it to the best advantage. 


The Devil’s Healing 197 


And we are pretty much a very unsophisticated 
lot. Yes, we are worse than unsophisticated. 
We are pretty apt to think we know, and to be 
rather set in thinking that way. We prefer to 
think so. 

What a spectacle! Jgnorant, and think we 
‘ know! A mixture of a little knowledge, much 
ignorance, and more contentment with ourselves 
just as we are. That’s the hardest kind of folk 
to help. That unseen fighter is surely a cun- 
ning strategist. 

The Book of God gives clear light on every 
sort of serious question. It will answer, and 
answer fully, any thoughtful question brought 
to it. 

It gives light here. It tells about satanic 
miracles. A miracle, you will remember, is the 
result of some power in action greater than men 
are familiar with. It does not mean something 
contrary to nature, but something more than 
the natural thing we are commonly used to. 


The Devil’s Miracles in Egypt. 


The Book tells distinctly about the Devil’s 
miracles. There are two groups of passages, one 
past, one regarding the future; Egypt in the 
past, and the earth-wide Crisis that is yet future. 

In the ease of Egypt, it is a time of partial 
visitation of judgment on the world-empire of 
its day. Moses performed ten miracles, by God’s 
direction, that entered vitally into the very life 
of the nation. 


198 About the Healing Christ 


The Egyptian magicians, or occult experts, 
performed three miracles in imitation of Moses, 
attempted a fourth, but failed in it, 

Then, frankly, with awe-stricken faces, they 
admitted that there was a power at work through 
Moses superior to them, distinctly greater than 
the power they stood for. 

The line of conflict here is quite sharply 
drawn. Moses acted by God’s direction. The 
Egyptian king opposed him econtemptuously, 
then stubbornly, then incorrigibly. 

The magicians were the king’s servants. They 
were the experts of that time in the occult, in 
dealing with unseen spirits and spirit forces. 
They were experts in the black art. 

They were loyal to Pharaoh in his resisting 
and scoffing at God. They fought Moses and 
God, with all the power at their command. 

The line of conflict could not be more clearly 
marked. The Devil was opposing God. God and 
the Devil were the real spirit opponents behind 
the human scenes. 

The striking thing just now is that there were 
three miracles done by the magicians through 
the Devil’s power. There was a fourth at- 
tempted but it failed, completely. 

There is further the tacit inference of a limit 
in the Devil’s power even in the three miracles 
actually performed. 

The magicians caused their rods to become 
serpents. There was distinetly an evil super- 
natural power at work. Perhaps serpent activ- 
ity was more easily within the Devil’s range of 


The Devil’s Healing 199 


action. Yet Moses’ serpent swallows up the 
others! Moses understood that word spoken 
long after about treading upon serpents. 

The turning of water into blood, and the 
plague of countless frogs, by the magicians, fol- 
lowing Moses’ initiative, again reveal the Devil’s 
supernatural power at work. It is clearly a 
supernatural transaction in each ease. 

But there is a limitation. Moses’ miracles 
suggest an overflowing supply of power. The 
other is less. The thing was done, yet, as 
though there was no flush of power at command, 
rather a scantiness. 

The fourth attempt was a confessed failure. 
The experts confessed themselves helpless in the 
face of this display of God’s power. They’re 
clean outdone, outclassed. And a little later the 
magicians themselves are helpless sufferers when 
the plague of boils came. 

The purpose of these satanic miracles is four- 
fold, to fight God, to discredit His messenger 
Moses, to deceive the Egyptians and indeed all 
the world (for such events would travel like 
wildfire), and to keep God’s nation in slavery. 
It is clearly the Devil at work, behind Pharaoh, 
as an all too-willing tool. 

The limits to the Devil’s supernatural power 
are threefold. The miracles done are an imita- 
tion. There is no initiative. Each is distinctly 
less, much less in extent than the thing imitated. 
And there is a sharp line beyond which the 
Devil’s power cannot go. 

But the thing to mark just now is this: the 


200 About the Healing Christ 


Devil can work miracles. He has supernatural 
power, with sharp definite limitation. 


The Devil’s Healings in the Coming Crisis. 


Then we swing to the other end of the Book. 
There is a time of Crisis repeatedly spoken of, 
world-wide, preceding a New Order of Things 
on the earth. 

It will be a time of marked satanic activity. 
And in connection with that there will be 
miracles of healing done by the Devil. 

His purpose of course is to deceive, to drive 
through his own plans, and to tighten his hold 
on men’s lives. Let us look at the Scripture 
teaching regarding this. 

The common phrase in the New Testament for 
miracles is the phrase ‘‘signs and wonders.’’ 
Sometimes the language used is ‘‘signs,’’ some- 
times ‘‘signs and wonders,’’ sometimes ‘‘signs 
and wonders and powers,’’ sometimes ‘‘signs 
and powers.’’ A few times the word ‘‘miracles”’ 
is used. 

Now, by far the greater number of the mir- 
acles so specified are miracles of bodily healing. 
Of the thirty-three miracles done by Christ 
twenty-four are miracles of bodily healing. And 
four others have to do with bodily need. 

In the Book of Acts the use of this phrase for 
miracles of healing is yet more marked. Prac- 
tically the phrase ‘‘signs and wonders,’’ with 
its variations, is the equivalent in the New Testa- 
ment for miracles of bodily healing. Other 


The Devil’s Healing 201 


usage is so exceptional as to emphasize this as 
the common rule. 

Now, the striking thing to mark is that this 
is the phrase used for a distinctive phase of 
satanic activity during that coming Crisis. 
There are three outstanding passages, in the Gos- 
pels, by Paul, and in the Revelation. 

In that significant Olivet Talk with four dis- 
ciples, within a week of the tragic end, Christ is 
speaking of the Crisis preceding His own Com- 
ing and the New Order of Things. 

He speaks of various characteristics of that 
tribulation-crisis. He says ‘‘There shall arise 
false Christs (evil men pretending to be Christ), 
and false prophets (or religious teachers), and 
shall show great signs and wonders; ”’ 

And then the specific purpose of this is di- 
rectly stated. It is directed against Christ’s fol- 
lowers. It is ‘‘to lead astray, if (that be) pos- 

sible, even the elect,’’ 2. e., Christ’s own people.’ 
_. Taking the phrase ‘‘signs and wonders’’ at 
its common meaning in the New Testament, this 
would mean, to the four disciples listening, that 
there will be marked miracles of healing, by 
satanie power, during that climax of evil, for the 
express purpose of deceiving and leading astray 
Christ’s own people. 

In his second letter to the disciples at Thes- 
salonica Paul is answering some questions that 
have arisen about just when Christ’s return was 
to be expected. 

And he explains that there would be a great 


* Matthew 24:24, Mark 13: 22. 


202 About the Healing Christ 


evil leader in action, about whom the coming — 
Crisis will centre. 

This leader would be at the very height of 
his blasphemous career at the time of Christ’s 
coming. He would be destroyed by the glorious 
appearance of Christ (the blazing forth or shin- 
ing forth of His arrival). 

Then Paul speaks of the marked traits of this 
strange, foul, evil leader, the Antichrist, this 
personification of the Devil. His activity will be 
‘faeccording to the working of Satan with all 
power and signs and wonders of falsehood,’’ or 
‘lying wonders.’’ 

That is, these miracles are done, in imitation 
of Christ’s miracles, to deceive the people and 
lead them astray.’ 

Here is this same phrase again. Paul’s use of 
it would mean only one thing to these Thes- 
salonian disciples, and that is, miracles of heal- 
ing, by satanic power, to deceive. 

There is a parallel passage to this in one of 
Moses’ talks in the Plains of Moab.’ He is speak- 
ing of what is to be done in case a false prophet 
certified his message by ‘‘a sign or a wonder,’’ 
and the miraculous thing actually taking place, 
so as to lead the people away from the true 
worship. Plainly the thing was quite familiar 
to these people. 

John’s Patmos Revelation message has the 
same thing. It is spoken of repeatedly as one 
of the marked characteristics of the campaign 
of deception in that brief terrific future Crisis. 


*2 Thessalonians 2:9, 10, * Deuteronomy 13: I-3. 


The Devil’s Healing 203 


There’s a description of the activity of a 
leader of evil who will be the immediate asso- 
ciate of that foul Antichrist.’ He is a religious 
leader, a sort of court-preacher to the Anti- 
christ himself who reigns as a king of kings for 
a brief time. 

Among other things in the description this 
stands out, ‘‘and he doeth great signs that he 
should even make fire to come down out of 
heaven upon the earth in the sight of men. And 
he deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by 
reason of the signs ‘it 

The startling thing of fire coming down is 
specified in speaking of the great signs. This is 
particularized because it is something unusual, 
in addition to the usual meaning of the phrase 
‘‘ereat signs.”’ 

A little later John is told of happenings to- 
ward the end of that troublous crisis period. 
There will be sent out by the Devil himself and 
by his two chief leaders, the Antichrist and his 
court-preacher, ‘‘spirits of demons working 
signs,’’ sent into all the earth.’ 

And in speaking of the utter defeat and rout of 
the Antichrist and his evil associates, this court- 
preacher who is spoken of here as the false re- 
ligious teacher, is identified as the one ‘‘that 
wrought the signs . . . wherewith he de- 
ceived them ”? Clearly these signs are an 
outstanding feature.’ This emphasis of a five- 
fold repetition is striking. 








*xRevelation 13:13-14. * Revelation 16: 13-14, 
® Revelation 19:19, 20. 


204 About the Healing Christ 


The whole New Testament use of the phrase 
makes clear that miracles of healing by satanic 
power will be one of the commonest, if not the 
most common, feature of that crisis time that is 
coming, some time. 

And the whole purpose in this is to deceive 
the people, and particularly the Church con- 
stituency. It is to make them think that it is 
God at work. 

And, uninstructed as they so largely are, and 
so not keen to discern, they will be easy prey to 
these tactics. 


The Devil’s Healing To-day. 


But one need not go back to Egypt, nor for- 
ward to the coming crisis time. He ean find 
references closer at hand in the Book of Life, 
being written daily. Our own time is witnessing 
this sort of thing in marked measure, and in- 
creasing extent. 

The Church of Christ has not been true to 
the full Gospel of Christ. I say that very 
thoughtfully and sadly. I do not say it to eriti- 
cise the Church, but only to help understand 
things at the present time a bit better. 

I love the Church. I reverence its past, and 
its present inestimable service in the world. If 
my words seem critical, I am simply criticising 
myself, so far as any man is a part of the 
Church. 

With fine exceptions, the Church of Christ 
has not told out fully in any generation, since 


The Devil’s Healing 205 


the first few Christian centuries, the full rounded 
Gospel of Christ. 

And so it is not a surprising thing that there 
have grown up false teachings, and false sys- 
tems of teaching, about bodily healing. 

The very need, sore need, of the crowds every- 
where in this regard has made a rare oppor- 
tunity to teach about bodily healing in a wrong 
way. 

The people are hungry, eager for help. And 
the Devil has never been known to be slow in 
using every door open to him, or that he could 
pry open. 

Just now there is a system of teaching about 
healing, and a system of healing, that holds the 
centre of the stage. 

It has grown up within living memory, and 
within the past ten years seems to have grown 
more vigorous than ever. 

It has spread like a cursed wildfire in our own 
land, up and down Europe, into the African 
edges, and the Orient, and indeed wherever the 
Anglo-American trail leaves traces. 

It uses Christ’s name quite freely. It quotes 
or rather half-quotes, misquotes, the Bible. Its 
teaching is a mixture of Christian phraseology, 
devout language, psychological half-truths, and 
positive untruths. 

It makes pretense of being a Christian Church. 
IT need not repeat its name, it is so well known. 
And the thing to mark just now is that people 
are healed through its ministrations, within 
sharply marked limitations and restrictions. 


206 About the Healing Christ 


There’s no question that people do experi- 
ence, through its teaching, healing of a certain 
sort, up to a certain extent. That fact is quite 
clear. 

It will be remembered what has been said in 
a previous Talk on the seven ways in which 
healing comes to one’s body.’ 

The Creator has graciously put a healing 
power within the human body. There is natural 
healing without conscious cooperation on our 
part. 

There is this same natural healing assisted by 
an intelligent understanding and codperation. 
An enlightened instructed understanding of this 
remarkable healing power in the body, and our 
intelligent codperation, make an enormous dif- 
ference. It helps greatly. 

Our mental attitude is often the decisive thing 
in illness, turning the tide in favour of healing 
and health. This is spoken of somewhat fully 
in the previous Talk referred to. 

This is the second way in which healing comes. 
It should be noted. It will be spoken of again 
later. 

Then there is healing through this same natu- 
ral power assisted by human wisdom and skill, 
both personal and professional. 

Still further, there is healing sometimes 
through this natural power in our bodies over- 
coming what may have been done by blundering 
unwise human touch. These are the four natural 
ways. 

*See chapter “ How Does Christ Heal?” 


The Devil’s Healing 207 


There are two supernatural ways. There is 
healing by Christ’s direct touch, a supernatural 
touch, in addition to the creative natural power 
spoken of. And, of course, this little series of 
‘*Quiet Talks’’ is devoted to that one thing. 

Then there is a healing by the Devil’s touch, 
a supernatural touch... And there may be a 
blending of two or more of these. 

Seven ways in which healing may come to 
one’s body, four natural, two supernatural, and 
one a blend or combination of two or more of 
these. 

Now, it should be keenly noted, that in this 
false system we are talking about, this so-called 
Christian system, the healings that do occur 
come through two of these ways. 

There is much emphasis put on the second of 
these, the human understanding of, and co- 
operating with, that natural healing power. 

I do not mean to say that it is taught in a 
clear, intelligent fashion. Clear teaching is con- 
spicuously absent here. It is quite doubtful if 
the thing is intelligently understood so as to 
give clear teaching. 

There is a strange garbled mixture of truths 
and half-truths and positive not-truths. But 
through all there is a continual emphasis on 
one’s mental attitude. 

And so far as this insistence actually affects 
one’s attitude that inner power of healing swings 
into action. And this, be it noted, is good so 
far as it is good. 

If the teaching were clear, and more, if it 


208 About the Healing Christ 


were put in right connection with other teaching 
that belongs with it, the results would be yet 
better. But, of course, nothing of that good 
sort could be gotten here. 

There is no evil system of teaching all bad. 
It would fall of its own dead weight. The Devil 
always steals a veneering of some truth for his 
lies. He is the first expert in the fine art of 
camouflage. 

The truth about the influence of the mind on 
the body, so little appreciated to the full by any 
one, was true for Adam and Eve in Eden, for - 
Cain outside Eden, with the wickedest man that 
ever lived as with the saintliest, in savage wilds 
as in cultured centres. 

God’s creative touch is never off any man’s 
body. This is one of the seven ways of healing 
emphasized partly by this false system of heal- 
ing. 

There is a second way used in this false teach- 
ing. It brings in a strange fact, that makes one 
stare out. The Devil heals through this so-called 
Christian teaching. The evidence is clear, and 
the fact indisputable. _ 

‘‘Why,’’ you instantly ery out, ‘‘the Devil 
heal! Absurd! Ridiculous! The Devil is bad. 
Healing is only good. Will a bad Devil do a 
good thing? ”’ 

And the answer to that is quite clear and 
positive. A bad Devil will do a good thing for 
a bad purpose, to get hold on a man’s life, and 
to tighten his hold. 

A mongrel cur back of your dwelling disturbs 


The Devil’s Healing 209 


your night’s sleep, night after night. You are 
too gentle-hearted perhaps to use a revolver. 

So you get a bit of good meat and some bad 
poison. You combine them dexterously. You 
throw the mixture in the back alley. 

The dog has no sense of discernment between 
good meat and bad poison. He eats the good 
’ meat greedily. He gets the bad poison. 

The city’s garbage cart has an extra job. 
And now your night’s slumbers are undisturbed. 
The strategy was a success. 

Some dear good people, even some saintly 
Christian folk, might claim close kinship with 
that dog in one particular. They have no dis- 
cernment, no spirit discernment. 

They are easily caught with the Christian 
phraseology in the false teaching, but don’t de- 
tect the absence of the real thing, the actual 
presence of the Devil’s own teachings. 


b Christ’s Blood the Touchstone. 


Spirit discernment is one of the rarest, if not 
the rarest thing to-day. This is true even in 
cultured Christian circles. It is strangely true 
how strangely lacking discernment is, 

The outstanding characteristic of preaching 
to-day is the bewitching, bewildering mixture 
and blend of half-truths, positive non-truths, 
and utter absence of the really few essential 
truths. 

The whole is covered with a more or less 
highly polished veneering of either religious talk 
or Christian verbiage. And the pleasing per- 


210 About the Healing Christ 


sonality, vigorous mentality, fine diction, 
scholarly quotations and allusions, all this be- 
fogs as to the real message being given. 

This is true of all communions, and in all 
parts of Christendom, and into the mission lands, 
with fine exceptions. 

But how shall we common folk know what 
teaching to accept about bodily healing? We 
are all busy earning bread and drink, boots and 
income tax. We can’t all be experts. How 
shall we know? 

And the answer is simple. <A single ray of 
clear shining of the sun will pierce clear through 
the pretty French-gray fogs that gather. 

There is a touchstone by which to test any 
teaching whether in type or on tongue. It’s an 
acid test, unfailing. 

And this is the test: the distinctive singular 
personality of Christ, and the distinctive solitary 
meaning of His death on Calvary and His living 
again afterward. 

There is no blood-red tinge to the false teach- 
ings spoken of, It is never safe to accept super- 
natural healing except where the deity of Christ 
is distinetly emphasized, and the sacrificial blood 
He shed for us, as none other did nor could nor 
can, is made blessedly prominent. 

The Devil hates the blood of the solitary God- 
Man. He fears it. He crouches terrified, and 
flees where it is emphasized and pled in prayer. 
It, at, the blood, spells out his stinging defeat. 
And right well he knows it. 

Under all this vague verbiage, this befogging 


The Devil’s Healing 211 


talk about the inspiration of the Book, and the 
virgin birth, and the tremendous event of the 
third-morning-after, lies the distinet Devil touch 
and trail, and hate and dread. 

The healing that, without question, comes in 
connection with this false so-called Christian 
teaching has this twofold source. 

It comes through the working of that natural 
healing and the right mental attitude of which 
we have commonly been taught so little. 

God is always true to His truth, and to Him- 
self, and to us men, even though the Devil him- 
self seek to pervert things. 

And further there is no question that the 
Devil heals, so far as he can, through this 
false so-called Christian teaching. 

But two things should be keenly noted about 
the Devil’s healing. There is a distinct line be- 
yond which he cannot go. Over that line he is 
powerless. 

Christ healed perfectly and permanently and 
instantly, and He still does when we allow it. 
The Devil’s healings are never perfect nor per- 
manent. 

One remembers the Egyptian story. There 
the Devil’s supernatural power was limited, 
sharply limited, and indeed within narrow lim- 
its. In comparison with God it was scanty, as 
though with an effort, and with a small result. 
And it was in imitation always, mere imitation. 

The second thing to mark yet more sharply 
is this. The Devil’s healing makes slaves. It is 
a striking thing, of which the instances are 


212 About the Healing Christ 


countless, that the healing that comes through 
the Devil’s imitation of Christ leads to a servile 
degrading bondage. 

There is a bondage of spirit, of mental vigour, 
and a moral bondage that has a vise-like grip. 
One stumbles constantly over these mental, 
moral wrecks. 

That slavery can be broken only through the 
power of the blood of Christ, and then usually 
only through the severest mental and spirit 
struggle. But it can be broken. Christ, Christ’s 
blood, will set any one blessedly free. 

Any one, any time, who will, may come to> 
Christ, trusting as simply as a little child and 
as fully as the maturest man. 

With all his perplexities and burdens he may 
come. And Christ never fails. His blood 
eleanseth from sin. It breaks the Devil’s 
shackles. And it heals our bodies. 

Observations for fully a quarter of a century, 
in many lands, with all sorts of persons, with 
countless interviews, confirms by personal knowl- 
edge what is being said. The Book of Life has 
furnished illustrations for all these statements. 


The Power of the Blood of Christ. 


One winter my wife and I met a German head- 
deaconess in Stockholm, and learned from her 
lips an unusual incident. 

She was a woman in middle life, of large 
frame and full of physical vigour. She was en- 
gaged, and had been for years, in mission work 


The Devil’s Healing 213 


in Berlin, especially among girls and young 
women who had been led astray. 

We were guests together in the same home 
for a week, and had many opportunities for fel- 
lowship and exchange of experiences. 

We came to respect her for her homely com- 
mon sense, and cautious mature judgments, and 
to love her for her evident saintliness and her 
sacrificial life in the difficult field of service into 
which she had been led. 

The incident I am speaking of now was one 
of many. I would hesitate to tell it were it not 
for the sanity, and cautiousness, and thoughtful 
eare in detailed observation, that marked the 
deaconess’ speech. 

But as I listened and questioned and thought 
and prayed throughout that week, I found an 
answer of acceptance in my inner spirit to her 
unusual story. 

The story was of a woman whom the deaconess 
knew personally. This woman lived out in the 
eountry not far from Berlin. Her little daugh- 
ter accidentally fell into an open fire, and was 
seriously burned in her face. 

The woman did a thing that seems incredible. 
And yet the more one comes in touch with actual 
life in the old world the less incredible it seems. 
Facts open one’s eyes. 

The woman said that she went out to an old 
tree in the forest, and there made a compact with 
the Devil that if he would heal her daughter 
of the burn she would serve him faithfully. 

The thing seemed impossible, both in the will- 


214 About the Healing Christ 


ingness to do such a thing, and that such a trans- 
action could take place. 

But the woman herself afterward told the 
story to the deaconess who was telling us. And 
it was clearly real to the woman who said she 
made the pact. | 

The woman said that at once her child’s face 
was as if the fire had not touched it. The heal- 
ing seemed complete. No scars remained. 
That’s the first part of the story. 

The child grew to be a young woman of fine 
sweet beauty of face and form. Meanwhile they 
had moved in to Berlin and settled there. 

The young woman attended some meetings at 
a mission hall and was deeply impressed. And 
one night she accepted Christ as her personal 
Saviour, and dedicated her life to Him. I think 
the mother herself had become a Christian about 
this same time. 

And, at onee, the marks of the fire appeared 
on her daughter’s face as though just fresh. 
The deaconess was present. They were all 
greatly distressed. The mother explained to the 
deaconess about the earlier experience. 

The deaconess knew about Christ’s healing 
power, and so taught them. They had a time 
of prayer together. And again, the deaconess 
told us, the healing touch, Christ’s healing touch, 
came. And again the young woman’s face 
showed no marks of the fire. The deaconess her- 
self witnessed this. 

That was the deaconess’ story. The thing 
seemed quite incredible. But we were in the 


The Devil’s Healing 215 


home for a week with this thoughtful, matured, 
rarely-poised, saintly woman. 

And as the days passed, and I studied her, and 
talked with her from day to day, and questioned, 
the conviction deepened that she was reliable. 

Her caution, her detail of description, her 
habitual accuracy of observation, and her eare- 
fulness in statement, quite convinced me of her 
reliability as a witness of what she told us. 
_ And so I have repeated her story here. 

The story is the more striking in telling of a 
double healing, the Devil’s and Christ’s. There 
is the rivalry very real between the two, bitter 
and hopeless on the Devil’s side; insistent and 
certain of victory on Christ’s side. 

And the human will, sovereign in its choice, 
decides in that conflict. Here was a decisive de- 
feat for the Devil, and the sweeping victory of 
Christ, on the battlefield of one human life. 
And the young woman’s decision, insisted on 
under sore stress, was the decisive thing. 

The Devil’s intense selfishness stands out, his 
spite spirit. He touches only to hurt. He helps 
only to help himself. He helps only to hurt. 

The Devil is all for himself. There was the 
ugly fling-back of a defeated foe. He would do 
his worst when forced to go. 

The Deyil is always on the heels of God to 
hurt. God is ever quick as a flash on the heels 
of the Devil to reach eagerly out and help and 
heal. 

Christ was God Himself coming down to the 
battlefield. He gave the Devil the decisive blow. 


216 About the Healing Christ 


And so man may be set quite free. And so he 
is made strong to choose right, and only right, 
regardless of consequences. 


The School of Discernment. 


The great need to-day among Christian people 
is spirit discernment. Please note: not the erit- 
ical spirit that hunts heresies and picks flaws. 

That only hurts the hunter and helps no one. 
Nagging criticism is like a sharp-edged knife 
that has no hilt. It cuts the hand that uses it, 
and cuts deep. 

Discernment means the trained ear that listens 
attentively, and discerns the main thing being 
taught, under whatever rhetorical veneering. 

It means the opened eye quick to see between 
the lines what is really there, maybe in hiding. 

It means the humble spirit, willing to see its 
own faults and defects, only eager to be right. 
It means the loving spirit quick to give any help 
to any man. 

The sore need to-day is for teaching, not argu- 
ment and discussion, but teaching. Never was 
the need sorer. Argument only hardens. Hach 
side is more set. And the crowd cheers or jeers, 
according to their preconceived preferences. 

Teaching, the clear, positive, patient teaching 
of God’s truth, put into the sort of language men 
think in, with homely illustrations out of real 
life, this is sorely needed. 

One should set himself to cultivate an accur- 
ate discernment or appraisal of all that meets 
his eye and ear. He should do it for self- 


The Devil’s Healing 217 


protection, and for true culture, and to help 
others. 

There’s a School of Discernment. One may 
well take time for a special course. The re- 
quirements for entrance are few and simple. 
They are five in number, an act, a habit, a book, 
- a bit of time, and a spirit. 

The act? surrender to Christ as the Master. 
The habit? doing habitually what would please 
Him in everything. And when in doubt, don’t. 

The Book? this rare, singularly, solitary Book 
of God. The time? the daily bit of quiet time 
off alone with the Book, with the mind alert, and 
the spirit open. 

The spirit? the spirit of prayer for under- 
standing, discernment, seeing things as they are. 
And with this goes the thoughtful, brooding 
spirit. 

And with all of these goes the willing spirit, 
willingness to accept facts and conclusions that 
you don’t like, that run crosswise to your pre- 
conceptions and preferences and habits. 

If we will only start in this school, and attend 
faithfully it will be of the rarest value in the 
coming days, the coming difficult days. 

The outcome will be mental and spirit discern- 
ment, a keen, a growing discernment. And with 
it will go the brotherly spirit that will help any 
one in personal need no matter how he differs 
with you, or criticises you. 

He that is willing to do Christ’s will for him, 
regardless of how it may change some personal 
things, will have in increasing degree that keen, 


218 About the Healing Christ 


clear knowledge of truth, of the Book’s teaching, 
of Christ Himself who embodies all truth in 
Himself.’ 

The clear vision, the discriminating ear, the 
balanced understanding of things that differ, the 
obedient spirit, the heart of love in all one’s 
personal contacts, these are some results of at- 
tendance at the Discernment School. 

But whether in school or out, the outstanding 
thing just now is this. There’s healing for our 
bodies through the solitary God-Man who died 
as none other did nor could nor ean, and lived 
again, and still lives. 

And through this Man’s blood there’s deliv- 
erance from any bondage that has come, full, 
sweet, glad, free deliverance. 

And Christ waits at your side now. 


* John 47 *i17. 


DEVOTIONAL 
cn en ae ee I TE ane raeeromencenrpenrnenemance | 


JOHN WANAMAKER 


Prayers of John Wanamaker 


With an Introduction by A. G. MacLennan, 
D.D., Pastor, Bethany Central Church, Phila- 
delphia. $1.25. 

A large number of the prayers (of which the notes 
‘were preserved) are here brought together,—prayers 
that reveal a singularly childlike faith and _ simplicity 
of thought—which indicate how humbly and devoutly 
John Wanamaker walked and talked with God. 


JOHN TIMOTiY STONE, D.D. 


Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Il. 
Author of “Recruiting for Christ,” etc. 


To Start the Day 
A Thought, A Verse, A Song. $1.50. 


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Scripture, and then by a stanza from a hymn or verse o 
. @ poem, arranged for every day of the year for devotional 
teading and meditation.”—The Christian Guardian. 





ANNIE RICHARDSON KENNEDY 


A Year in John’s Gospel 


Devotional Studies for Every Day. $2.00. 

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GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D. 


A Rendezvous with Life 
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HARMON ALLEN BALDWIN 


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A book wrought in €, spiritual temper, free of all 
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esus Christ. 


STANDARD REFERENCE WORKS 








G. B. F. HALLOCK Editor of “The Expositor.” 


A Modern Cyclopedia of Illus- 
trations for All Occasions 


Nineteen Hundred and Thirty-eight Illustrations. 


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A comprehensive collection of illustrative incidents, 

anecdotes and other suggestive material for the outstandin 

days and seasons of the church year. ‘The anthor, well- 

known to the readers of “The Expositor,” has presented 

a really valuable handbook for Preachers, Sunday School 
Superintendents and all Christian workers, 


JAMES INGLIS 
The Bible Text Cyclopedia 


A Complete Classification of Scripture Texts. 
New Edition. Large 8vo, $2.0c 


‘More sensible and convenient, and every way more 
satisfactory than any book of the kind we have ever 
known. We know. of no other work comparable witb 
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ANGUS-GREEN 
Cyclopedic Handbook to the Bible 


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New Edition. 832 pages, with Index, $3.00. 
“The Best thing in its line.’—Ira M. Price, Univ. of 
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; 


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The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge 
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Consisting of 500,000 Scripture References and 
Parallel Passages. 788 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. 
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any other book of which I have any knowledge.”—R. R. 
McBurney, Former Gen. Sec., Y. M. C. A., New York, 


? fae a BUCKLAND, Editor 


Universal Bible Dictionary 
511 pages. 8vo. Cloth. $3.00. 


Dr. Campbell Morgan says: “Clear, concise, compre- 
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would take the Bible, and go through it book by Look with 
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EVANGELISTIC WORK 
ee | 


OZORA H. DAVIS, D.D. 
President Chicago Theological Seminary. 


Preaching the Social Gospel 

$1.50. 

The new book by the author of “Evangelistic Preach 

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latest work of President Davis’. 


J. WILBUR CHAPMAN, D.D. 


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is without a dull or meaningless page. 


FRANK CHALMERS McKEAN, A.M., D.D. 


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and Other Sermons 


Introduction by J. A. Marquis, D.D. $1.25 


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PRAYER, DEVOTIONAL, ETC. 








J. D. JONES, D.D. Author of “St. Paul’s Certainties.” 


The King of Love 
Meditations on The Twenty-third Psalm. $1.25. 


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LYNN HAROLD HOUGH, D.D. 


The Strategy of the Devotional Life 
75¢- 


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FRANK W. GUNSAULUS, D.D, 


Prayers of Frank W. Gunsaulus 
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J, PATERSON-SMYTH, LL.D., D.C.L. 


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STRIKING ADDRESSES 
——————————————————— 
JOHN HENRY JOWETT,D.D. 


God Our Contemporary 


A Series of Complete Addresses $1.50. 


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wwe find the resources to meet the needs of human life. 


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v es 

Revealing Light $1.50. 

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best preaching of this famous “preacher to young men.” 


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Last Minister of Regent’s Park Chapel, Londow. 


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able to heal the wounds and woes of humanity. 


RUSSELL H. CONWELL, D.D. 


Pastor Baptist Temple, Philadelphia, 


Unused Powers $1.25. 
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perimental knowledge and practical wisdom of a man, who 
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GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D. 


Minister of the First Congregational Church, 
Detroit, Michigan. 


The Undiscovered Country $1.50. 

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BIBLE STUDY 
aS OE a 


P, WHITWELL WILSON — Awthor of Lhe Chrise 
ee We Ferget"* “~~ 


The Church We Forget 


A Study of the Life and Words of the Early 
Christians. 8vo, cloth, net 

The author of “The Christ We Forget” here furnishes 
@ companion-picture of the earliest Christian Church—of 
the men and women, of like feelings with ourselves, who 
followed Christ and fought His battles in the Roman 
world of their day. “Here again,” says Mr. Wilson, “my 
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is a page which he who runs may read.” 


C. ALPHONSO SMITH, P&.D., LL.D. 


Head of the Department of English in tha U. S. Navas 
4 Academy, Annapolis, Mad. 


Key-note Studies in Key-note Books 


of the Bible 12mo, cloth, net 


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Studies in Genesis, Historic, Prophetic and Exe 
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EVERETT PEPPERRELL WHEELER, 4.M. 
Author of Sixty Years of American Life,” 646, 


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amines its teachings as they relate to sociology, labor 
capital, socialism, war, fatalism, prayer, immortality. & 
lucid, helpful book, 





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